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The story of the invention of the term, 'deepfunk' is probably only known among fans and practitioners of this niche-genre. In short, it all started in the 1990s when DJs like Keb Darge, Mark 'Snowboy' Cotgrove and others began spinning obscure and feral Funk 45 RPM singles from local American bands, ostensibly generating another sub-category branch off of the mighty Northern Soul tree. The dance-club phenomenon inevitably spilled over to contemporary groups on the funk scene which immediately tried to record their music the way their idols did. The 'rare groove' and 'acid jazz' movements had run their course and there was a concerted effort to reinstate primitive idiomatic styles and techniques into the music, most notably by 90s funk collective The Poets of Rhythm. As more years passed by the number of bands steadily increased (although in tiny numbers, compared to the mainstream market). Almost every country had a representative with the majority of them coming from the United Kingdom. The deepfunk sound was still a niche, however a very few bands made it onto the mainstream charts, most notably Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings.

At the height of the retro-soul movement a questionable development took place. As more bands arrived on the scene, the production became more and more polished and pop-ish. Some of that squeaky-clean tidiness began to creep into the recordings, encouraged in part by the signature sounds of the digital recording technology available at that time. Some bands even tried to jump onto the possibility of promoting their music as 'deepfunk' although they were actually playing slick, funky pop music. This way some people who thought they were listening to raw, energetic funk actually felt quite ambushed when hit with real deepfunk. In fact, a certain percentage of funk music produced within the past 20 years does not deserve to be described as 'deepfunk' at all. Fortunately there were (and are) some pleasant exceptions which did not just imitate but actually rendered amazing funk music just like some of the finest funk combos of the 1960s and 70s.

One of those creative minds is without a doubt Joel Ricci aka Lucky Brown. Originally from Seattle, Washington, USA, he has enriched the deepfunk community since the mid-2000s with his stellar abilities. He is not only an amazing musician playing multiple instruments, but also a brilliant composer, arranger, and producer too. But for us here at Tramp he is much more, a close friend and remarkable human being. Whenever we were struggling, whether with the label or in private life, Joel and his musical work helped us to overcome everything and to keep going our path.

So here we are in 2023. The songs you are listening to right now are the complete Space Dream collection, split into two parts, representing the two living-room recording sessions from which his 2011 Tramp Records debut was compiled. Each fully remastered album contains unreleased material and comes with brand new, beautifully reimagined artwork by Ricci himself, housed in an authentic 1960s tip-on cover. A first class product from a first class musician for the discerning funk enthusiast.

Factory Benelux presents a limited crystal clear vinyl edition of Dark Light, the eighth studio album from post-punk trailblazers Section 25, originally released in 2013.
Recorded in 2012, Dark Light would be the band’s first collection of new material since the tragic loss of founder Larry Cassidy in 2010, and marked a return to the smooth electro and synth-pop textures first explored on their seminal 1984 album From the Hip. These echoes are amplified by the presence of co-vocalists Beth and Jo Cassidy, as well as a sublime cover image by iconic artist/designer Peter Saville.
Much of Dark Light was produced in collaboration with remixer Derek Miller (aka Outernationale), and includes new versions of single tracks Colour Movement Sex & Violence and Inner Drive. Other stand-out cuts include future pop classic My Outrage, also released as a single on Record Store Day.
“A revelation. The group were once doomy post-punks whose 1984 electronic album From the Hip anticipated house music and thrilled New York clubland. Now the deaths of singers Larry and Jenny Cassidy have inspired their daughter Bethany to carry on the family business and give the band a makeover. The collision of the original members’ brittle rhythms and the angelic voices of Bethany and similarly fresh-faced co-singer Jo takes recent material into shimmering club-pop heaven” (The Guardian, 2014)
Now released on vinyl for the very first time, FBN 145 is limited to just 500 copies pressed on crystal clear vinyl. The digital copy contains several bonus tracks.

Brussels-based power trio Don Kapot are set to release their rousing new album 'I Love Tempo' on the 15th of September via W.E.R.F. Records - NEWS distribution.

A lifeboat of free jazz, afrobeat and krautpunk sailed by Giotis Damianidis (bass), Viktor Perdieus (baritone saxophone) and Jakob Warmenbol (drums), the album follows the release of their critically acclaimed 2022 album 'Un Peu Live' recorded with Dutch multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer Fulco Ottervanger, and described by Bandcamp Daily as a 'very fun mix of modern jazz and krautrock.'

Don Kapot strike hard with their fourth album, mixed and co-produced by Greg Saunier (Deerhoof). Using a wide range of instruments, they evolve their sound into a solid complex rhythmic wave, shaken by demented samples and punk attitude.

From the vibrant, pounding rhythms of opening track 'Me Pig' to the off-kilter, whimsical beats of 'Macarona' and 'Terryble,' Don Kapot integrate new instruments and sounds into their repertoire, including keyboards and sampling. The groove remains a central element to the sound as the trio deliver a palpable blend of high tension and joyous energy where genres are demolished.

Elsewhere, the funk-heavy 'Bernadette' allows the magical, freestyle sax work of Perdieus take centre stage while 'Don Be No' is an urgent, flippant blast of vigour and zest before the album title track 'I Love Tempo' is an exhilarating and hypnotic journey that combines the freedom and verve of free jazz with the trance-like zeal of artists such as Tony Allen, Fela Kuti and Kologbo

Releasing their self-titled debut album in 2018 via Mr. Nakayasi Records, in 2021 they signed to Flemish record label W.E.R.F. Records and have released three albums under the label and have performed sold-out shows across Belgium and the Netherlands.

The players in Don Kapot also extend their musical adventures to other projects. Damianidis leads Punk Kong and has performed with Akira Sakata, Sakis Papadimitriou, Oghene Kologbo, Tony Allen, Baba Ani, Balasz Pandi and Gonzalo Almeida among others. Warmenbol was a member of The Unrevealed Society, Robbing Millions and M(h)ysteria. He also performs with Ruth Tafebe & the Afrosoul Messengers (with Giotis), Under The Reefs Orchestra and Monolithe Noir. Perdieus performs in Punk Kong and with Pompelmoes and The Milk Factory and took part in Ifa y Xango, Laia Arkestra, Bolhaerd, Nest and VVolk. He has also recorded and played with Andrew Cyrille (Bambi Pang Pang).

Curated by Reference Point residents Mark GV Taylor and George Arthur, this 15 track
compilation album features tracks the pair have played at their peripatetic, Europe wide
events since 2012.
Stretching from the 1970s to the present day the Reference Point compilation spans a whole
range of genres, tempos, languages and grooves where the quality of music is paramount
whether $1.00 bin records or $1000 rarities.
Reference Point, 'a place to hear the music', is a truly trans-global album with music from
Argentina, Brazil, Oakland, Detroit, Texas, London and more, including tracks from private
press albums, from artists who have played at Reference Point events and from current
artists such as MF Robots and Caixa Cubo.
Releasing as a CD, digital and a double LP, Reference Point is another essential compilation
from BBE Music and one that belongs in the collection of all collectors and lovers of great
music

Flatlife Records 3x12" Sales Pack including:

- V/A - The Factory 001 (FACTORY001RP)
- V/A - De Missie Various Artists 01 (DMVA01)
- V/A - Jack Wax Presents: Flat Acid Compilation Volume 5 (FLAT019RP)

Ltd grey vinyl LP! Manchester's/Berlin's The Underground Youth have built an impressive back catalogue of seven full-length albums. Now again their highly sought-after album Mademoiselle is being given a physical release by Fuzz Club. The story of Mademoiselle is a testament to the power of great music being able to reach an audience, regardless of the fact the artist might be unsigned, underground and almost unheard of. Originally released in 2010 and only available online, Mademoiselle has piled up millions of views on YouTube, and saw The Underground Youth acquire a cult following at a ferocious pace. The album has continued to endear audiences with its bluesy psychedelic-leaning, based on beautifully crafted lyricism and a sculpted sound. Layers of reverb-drenched, folk-indebted guitars and forlorn vocals bleed over hypnotising, monolithic drums to create a record that is 46 minutes of lethargic, lo-fi psych mastery.

Factory Benelux presents a special 35th anniversary edition of Here Comes Everybody, the highly-regarded second album by Scottish group The Wake, originally released by Factory Records in 1985. Just 800 copies will be made available for Record Store Day on 18 April 2020, pressed in crystal clear vinyl with a bonus 7-inch single + digital copy.

The Wake formed in Glasgow in 1981 after singer/guitarist Caesar left Altered Images. Joining Factory the following year, the group toured with New Order and released popular mini-album Harmony. Trailed by sprightly single Talk About the Past in 1984, second album Here Comes Everybody was eventually recorded as a trio, combining dreampop melodies and wistful lyricism typified by standout track O Pamela (later interpreted by artful French new wave covers project Nouvelle Vague).

Praise for Here Comes Everybody: “Holds up as a touchstone for aching, atmospheric synth-pop, all slinky guitars, crispy percussion, textured keyboards and limber bass" (Pitchfork); “The album stands as a pillar of moody synth pop, still bearing passing resemblance to New Order while retaining the bounce of the Postcard label bands and the cavernous production of Closer-era Joy Division, covering it all in some of the heaviest synth wash this side of Klaus Schulze" (Dusted)

Newly re-mastered for this special 35th anniversary edition, the original 8 track album is now augmented by companion singles Talk About the Past and Of the Matter, pressed on a bonus 7-inch single in a picture sleeve. Here Comes Everybody itself is pressed on clear vinyl, housed in a white reverse board sleeve with printed inner bag containing lyrics, images and liner notes by band members Carolyn Allen and Caesar.

2023 Repress Blue Vinyl

- Eagerly anticipated follow up to 2014 debut - number 7 in Mojo's best albums of the year.
- LP jacket is gloss laminate with front & back folds on the outside.The back panel is uncoated/matt varnish - 300 gsm card and 180g vinyl. Digital Download included.
- EU tour coming in April with Summer festivals later in 2017.

Sometimes it can take years to find your calling. Not so, for wanderer Julie Byrne, whose power of lyrical expression and melodic nous seems inborn. But often, what comes naturally demonstrates against speed. Julie's second album Not Even Happiness has taken time to evolve, but as it spans recollections of bustling roadside diners, the stars over the high desert, the aching weariness of change, the wildflowers on the coast of California and the irresolvable mysteries of love. Her new album archives a vivid world that would've otherwise been lost to the road and in doing so, Byrne exhibits her extraordinarily innate musicality.

In fact, some of the album's songs took two years of fine tuning to get where they needed to be. And if you were to ask her why the follow up to 2014's Rooms With Walls And Windows has taken so long, you'd only be greeted with a bemused smile as though it's the strangest question she's ever been asked, Writing comes from a natural process of change and growth. It took me up to this point to have the capacity to express my experience of the time in my life that these songs came from.'

Having counted Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, New Orleans as her home in recent years. For now, Julie has settled in New York City where she moonlights as a seasonal urban park ranger in Manhattan. Whether witnessing the Pacific Northwest for the first time ('Melting Grid'), the morning sky in Colorado after staying up through the night at a house party in the mountains of Boulder ('Natural Blue'), recording the passage of freight trains on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York ('Interlude'), or a journey fragrant with rose water, reading Frank O'Hara aloud from the passengers seat during a drive through the desert of Utah into the rainforest of Washington State ('All The Land Glimmered Beneath'), Not Even Happiness is Julie's beguilingly ode to the fringes of life.

Self-taught on the guitar after picking it up when her father became ill and could no longer play the instrument himself, Julie readily admits she can't read music and doesn't even listen to it all that much - the first vinyl she owned was indeed, her own. Recorded with producer Eric Littmann (Phantom Posse), Julie laid down the new album in her childhood home in western New York state and offers an altogether bigger picture to its predecessor through a wider, yet subtle, exploration of instruments and atmospherics, Not Even Happiness reveals an artist who has grown in confidence over time.

Byrne's debut album was released back in January 2014 on Chicago based DIY label Orindal after initially being as two separate cassettes releases. Rooms With Walls and Windows went onto become a true modern-day word of mouth success story (it would have to be for an artist who shuns all forms of social media) and ended the year being voted number 7 in Mojo magazine's best albums of the year, with the Huffington Post calling it "2014's Great American Album". A collection of hushed intimate front porch psych-folk songs, that unknowingly recalled the greats, but felt very much for our time. It saw her travel to Europe over two summers playing the Green Man festival and End Of The Road, as well as lesser trodden tour paths around Europe.

Julie Byrne will take the songs from Not Even Happiness (the first release on a new record label Basin Rock, based in the Lancashire / Yorkshire border town of Todmorden) on the road throughout 2017.

Following the success of Hiroshi Sato's reissue, Wewantsounds is proud to announce an ambitious programme to release Akiko Yano's albums outside of Japan starting with her 1981 synth-pop masterpiece 'Tadaima.', co-produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto and featuring YMO. The reissue includes original artwork by cult illustrator King Terry, a 2 page insert and OBI Strip (LP) plus a new introduction by renowned Electro DJ Joakim. Japan's best kept secret, Akiko Yano is one of the most ground-breaking artists to come out of the 70s Japanese music scene along with HaruomiHosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto. A piano child prodigy, Yano started her solo recording career in 1976 at just 21, recording her debut album "Japanese Girl" with no less than Little Feat as the backing band. This album created a stir on the Japanese scene and Yano was on the map. She went on to record a series of superb albums mixing Funk, Electro and City Pop featuring the cream of Japanese (and sometimes American and English) musicians; The fact she was producing, writing and composing herself made her a true maverick in a very male-dominated industry. These albums, incredibly, have never been released outside of Japan to this day. "Tadaima." ("I'm home" in Japanese) recorded in 1981 is Yano's fith studio album co-produced by her then husband Ryuichi Sakamoto and featuring all the musicians from YMO (HaruomiHosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Sakamoto), the group she was touring with at the time. "Tadaima." is Yano's first attempt to leave the acoustic piano aside and delve into the synth sounds of the early 80s. The result is a fascinating electro pop masterpiece showcasing her talent as a writer, musician and singer, creating her own unique universe. Mixing Japanese and English lyrics, Yano crafts perfect pop songs such as "Tadaima" "I Sing", "HarusakiKobeni" (which became one of her most famous songs after its use in a Japanese cosmetics ad), while "Taiyo No Onara" is a suite composed of nine short stories written by Children. Contributors on Tadaima also include ShigesatoItoi, one of Japan's most famous copywriters (for Studio Ghibli among others) who wrote two tracks on the album and his friend legendary illustrator TeruhikoYumura - aka King Terry - who revolutionised underground manga in the 70s with his 'heta-uma' (bad-good) style, as showcased on the album's striking artwork. 'Tadaima.' is the perfect entry point to Akiko Yano's unique body or work.


The reissue comes with the original obi strip artwork, extensive liner notes and a new introduction from Joakim

We’ve had a quieter start to 2021 than previous years, but that doesn’t mean we’ve not been busy. In fact, our next physical release marks the first in a run of 9 or more we’ve got booked and ready for the rest of the year... To kick off the first FKOFv release of 2021, we welcome an artist back to the roster we first worked with as FKOF Records in 2013. It’s been great watching Subreachers develop his sound and material over the last ~10yrs, and it’s wicked to have him on a record – with some incredible tunes as well! FKOFv005 also welcomes Congi to the label for the first time, with a sumptuous remix that we know you’ll love as much as we do...

Machine's self-titled album is shrouded in mystery. Supposedly released in 1972 on All Platinum Records, it completely disappeared without a trace and only a few copies seem to have survived, making it one of the rarest Funk albums on the planet. The album, only known to a handful of hardcore collectors, fetches prices in excess of $5000 whenever one turns up on the auction market, which happened four times in the last twenty years. Consisting of three young session musicians backing their label mates The Whatnauts, the group display a superb mix of socially-conscious hard-hitting funk and earthy soul, the album is reissued here in its original artwork and remastered by Colorsound Studio in Paris. It includes a 2-page insert with new liner notes by Charles Waring. Masterminded by singer and guitarist Michael Watson accompanied by bass player Curtis McTeer and drummer Donald McCoy, the album Machine came straight out of the New Jersey-based All Platinum studios where the label was based. The musicians had been active as session musicians for the label since the late 60s, mainly backing such label acts as The Whatnauts. As a matter of fact, the Whatnauts' manager, Bunch Herndon, makes guest appearance on the album as percussionist. Beside the core group of Watson, McTeer and McCoy, the album's line-up features several other cult musicians and also the orchestrator Sammy Lowe, a seasoned professional who had been arranging for Sam Cooke, James Brown and Nina Simone to name just a few. âÇ

Rare Jazz-Funk album from 1978 by Headhunters founder.
Featuring an all-star line-up including Herbie Hancock.
Originally released in 1978 on Tobisha EMI Japan.
First vinyl reissue outside of Japan released in collab w/Totown Records. Comes with double side insert.

Paul Jackson (born in Oakland, California in 1947) needs little introduction. Paul began playing bass at the age of nine and was considered by many of his teachers to be a musical prodigy. Jackson was known as a “Musician’s Musician” and shaped a sound that launched a new direction in contemporary music: the so-called ‘Pulse Playing’, a trademark sound of close-meshed funk grooves combined with sensational rhythms. With this innovative approach, he influenced entire generations of jazz and funk musicians to come. Paul’s compositions were sampled by big acts from the likes of Prince, TLC, Mobb Deep and NWA…just to name a few.

Paul Jackson was a founding member of the Headhunters under Herbie Hancock (THE group responsible for their ground-breaking fusion and jazz-funk compositions that took the world by storm in the 70’s). The solid union between Hancock and Jackson has been especially evident in the many international tours they have made together…not to mention that he participated on most of the Headhunters albums and Herbie’s solo albums.

Paul has also worked as a producer and as a studio/live musician alongside acts such as Santana, Sonny Rollins and The Pointer Sisters. He was a frequent guest performer at renowned international festivals such as the Montreux and Newport events. Jackson’s composing has not gone without recognition and was nominated for Grammy Awards in 1974, 1975 and 1976. Like other highly talented, creatively motivated engineers of music, Paul has expanded his career to other mediums such as playing on blockbuster movie soundtracks such as “Death wish” and “Dirty Harry”.

Paul Jackson also wrote five solo albums worth listening to – including the monster of an album that is known as “Black Octopus” which is considered to be a kind of lost Headhunters album.

His debut album “Black Octopus” saw the light of day in 1978 and is a total piece of art filled with abstract sticky funky grooves, floating electric piano playing, strong thumping bass lines, raw heavy drums and amazing vocal acrobatics (Jackson himself takes vocals in 3 out of 5 songs, and his soulful singing voice strikes an emotional chord that does not go unnoticed).

On “Black Octopus” you’ll also find some of the best all-star musicians from the likes of Alphonse Mouzon (Roy Ayers, Betty Davis, Azar Lawrence)…and last but not least fellow Headhunters Bennie Maupin and Herbie Hancock himself.

With “Black Octopus” Paul Jackson wrote the book on how a jazz-funk-fusion album should sound like. The fact that the album was only distributed in Japan at the time (Jackson resided in Tokyo since the late 70’s, where he passed away in 2021) continues to increase its reputation as an album that is VERY hard to find. This is a must-have gem…not only for fans of jazz, funk and rare grooves, but also for DJs and collectors around the globe.

"Matasuna Records" journey goes to "South Africa" for the first time to reissue two superb Afro-/Jazzfunk songs by the band "Freeway". Released in 1975 on the South African label "Flame", the album "Abahambi – Balomhlaba" was rediscovered and re-released by the good folks of "Black Pearl Records" from Berlin in 2013. The LP immediately landed on Matasuna Records' album best list and was at the top of the reissue wish list. Now that goal has come true to officially release two songs on 45, making them available as 7inch vinyl singles for the first time. Transferred from the original master tapes and remastered to sound as good as never before. An essential release!

The title track of the album "Abahambi" composed by "Sipho Gumede" and also the album opener is also the A-side of the Matasuna release. The song immediately builds up an incredible groove with the first bar and offers an atmospherically dense, 5-minute funk firework. The musicians master their instruments to perfection: be it in the collective playing as well as in the polished solo passages, where they can fully demonstrate their skills. One of the tunes that could run endlessly without ever getting boring.

On the flip side, the song "Umlazi" composed by "Enoch Mthalane" is another testament to the sophistication of their arrangements & musicality. Although this song is much slower in tempo, it is in no way inferior to the A-side in intensity. Especially the piano generates a hypnotic groove, which is skillfully continued by the guitar. Another musical treat!

The fact that the composers of the songs and musicians of the band are (or were) well-known greats of South African jazz music, but the album respectively the band name "Freeway" does not appear in any bio/discography is more than curious. Apparently it is considered proven that the band was founded by bass player "Sipho Gumede".

Born in "Durban" (South Africa), "Sipho Gumede" learned to play the guitar autodidactically until he received his first introduction to jazz from jazz guitarist "Cyril Magubane" at the age of 16. He switched to bass and then got his first professional music job as a member of the "Jazz Revellers" band. In 1970 he went to "Johannesburg" where he met, worked with and toured with some great musicians of that time. He formed several bands with some of them such as "Roots", "Spirits Rejoice" or "Sakhile". Gumede also recorded collaborative pieces with other jazz legends before recording his first solo album in 1985. In the following years he was involved in tours of North America, Europe, as well as many African countries. In 2000, Sipho moved back to "KwaZulu-Natal", where he taught music and performed for township youth. His artistic productivity did not stop there, however, and he produced a number of other albums. In total, he produced, recorded and contributed to more than 20 albums. He died in July 2004 after a short illness.

Fiddlehead's third album Death is Nothing to Us is a defiant, new chapter for the band. Since 2014, the Boston-based group have been honing their unique sound, bringing together the energy of hardcore, the anthemic melodies of `90s alternative, and the unbridled passion of Revolution Summer era emo. Their previous albums, 2018's Springtime and Blind and 2021's Between The Richness, dealt heavily with grief from different perspectives, and now their latest feels like a de facto culmination, drawing together many of the catalog's through-lines sonically and lyrically. The band again teamed with producer Chris Teti for their third record, and his punchy production captures Fiddlehead's live energy while showcasing the massive guitars and undeniable catchiness that makes their music so immensely satisfying. The album's concise 27 minutes sound like a natural extension of all of the band's strengths, but is glued together by vocalist Pat Flynn's singular tuneful roar. Flynn, since his time as the vocalist of Have Heart and now as Fiddlehead's frontman, has earned a reputation as one of hardcore's most thoughtful lyricists. He interweaves his ruminations on life, death, and all the joy and tragedy in between with references to Roman philosopher Lucretius; the author Jean Améry; other musicians like Bad Brains, Alex G, or Wire, and even references to the band's own back catalog. The humanity across Death Is Nothing To Us is palpable in every note. It's the kind of art that observes pain with real honesty rather than prescribing a solution for it-and in doing so, inadvertently offers some sense of hopefulness. The album finds Fiddlehead so deeply delving into the pain, confusion, nuances, and contradictions of sadness-so willingly wrapping their arms around a concept as existentially baffling as death itself-that they've created an album that is truly life-affirming. Death is Nothing to Us exemplifies so much of what makes Fiddlehead a special band: taking these heady, unanswerable questions and wrestling with them in a very earthbound way, all wrapped up in the urgent power of a three minute punk song.

Factory Benelux presents a limited (500 copies only) coloured vinyl edition of Nature + Degree, the sixth studio album from post-punk trailblazers Section 25, originally released in 2009.

Self-produced in 2009, Nature + Degree was the first SXXV project to feature new members Stephen Stringer and Stuart Hill. Founder members Larry and Vin Cassidy are also joined on several tracks by Beth Cassidy, whose vocal style recalls that of her late mother Jenny on From the Hip and Love & Hate.

Stand-out tracks include Garageland, Singularity, Remembrance and Saddled With Something, the latter burnished by a string quartet.

"All Factory groups now have a cult following and Section 25 have done more than many to deserve it. The electronic pop-rock sound is no longer novel, but on their second album of new material since 2007 the group turn in an album that's straightforward, sincere and musically ebullient" (The Wire)

"The natural follow-up to Part-Primitiv, yet still recalling the Factory legacy" (Brainwashed)

Undeniably one to watch, the release of his upcoming body of work is set to cement Sam’s status as one of the year’s most exciting new artists. His music has already been praised by the likes of MTV, Clash, BBC, and Notion magazine, played across BBC Radio 1 by Scott Mills, Clara Amfo, Ricky, Melvin and Charlie, and featured on flagship Spotify editorial playlists. Elton John and Bastille are fans, pop phenomenon Bebe Rexha has co-signed his work, while Justin Bieber is a prominent supporter. The two hosted a sensational IG Live together and more recently hung out in LA, while a video of Justin singing Sam’s single ‘Whole’ has gained more than one million views –and counting. Closer to home, JayKae jumped onstage on Sam’s last tour, and renowned UK tag-team Krept & Konan are fans. Such a broad spread of support simply represents his audience as a whole; there’s a literal army of TikTok followers moving alongside him, with Sam amassing almost a half million followers on Instagram –that’s more than some very established artists. In fact, he already has more Instagram followers than some winners at the BRITs last year. Matching pop touches to a classic feel, he’s often compared to Sam Fender’s anthemic truth-seeking or Tom Walker’s revelatory autobiography. Yet Sam’s work stands alone and is already scaling

Freak Frequency was a fitting title for the new material Greg Obis was planning for Stuck, the frenetic and twisted post-punk outfit he formed in 2018. Inspired by the doomy social economics of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, the bleak worldbuilding of horror games Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, and the bombastic yet arty satire of Devo, Obis channelled his audio analogy into Freak Frequency, an album ringing out with explosive sounds and ideas.

Stuck formed after Obis’ previous projects, Yeesh and Clearance, called it quits in short proximity. Obis is on guitar and vocals, which span from booming theatrics to ecstatic yelps. The project’s rhythm section is completed by shoegaze guitarist-turned-chugging bassist David Algrim and tightly wound drummer Tim Green—also a graphic designer, and the artist responsible for Stuck’s distinctively unified visual aesthetic. Original co-guitarist Donny Walsh contributed freely inventive lines for the first few years of the project, including on Freak Frequency; Ezra Saulnier of Red Tunic, the newest member of the band, now brings calculated contrapuntal riffs to match Obis’ parts.

The building blocks of Stuck include the egg punk eccentricities of Uranium Club and The Coneheads filtered through noise rock power, à la Jesus Lizard or Slint; that melange is glittered with the precision microtones of Unwound and Women. “I want the feeling of immersion and chaos and tension, with a big guitar amp playing a big chord,” says Obis of his inspirations, citing friends and peers Cloud Nothings and Preoccupations. “But I want it delivered by having a lot of smaller points of light poking through.”

In fact, writing for Freak Frequency began while Content’s recording was still underway—beginning with “Scared,” which features acoustic layers under feedback squalls. “Time Out,” with motoric guitars in the sputtering lineage of Wire, was also composed in late 2019. Obis wrote it about the cycles of compulsion and shame woven into social media use, and the way negativity drives algorithmic engagement. It became an exciting exercise for the group in ramping up speed; “I thought I knew how far I could push Tim’s tempos,” Obis recalls. “But Tim kept insisting we do it 20 bpm faster than what I had. He is an absolute monster for playing that.”

Album opener “The Punisher,” a spiral staircase of disembodied guitars and rhythmic slams over a 2/4 beat, came in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. It felt immediately emblematic to Freak Frequency, and Obis describes it as his favorite Stuck track: one he wishes he could write again and again. “It hits all the boxes that Stuck can do: it’s goofy, but there’s a lot of intricate guitar interplay, and at the end, there’s a big payoff,” he explains. The last song written was “Do Not Reply,” a pre-album single that came to Obis after engineering for Melkbelly and channelling their earworm melodies. Algrim wouldn’t let it on the record unless Melkbelly’s front person Miranda Winters dueted on vocals; she was happy to oblige, and the gritty epic closes Freak Frequency.

With slippery snark, percussive heft, and funhouse mirrors of sludge, Freak Frequency delivers its needed screeds with gratifying nuance. If Stuck’s interpretation of this messed-up world goes down like a bitter pill, it’s only because its sugar coating is too delicious to keep from eating.

Incredible jazz / prog / folk score to groundbreaking tattoo film by maverick filmmaker. Unreleased until now, so don’t go saying it’s a reissue because it isn’t, but I’m sure some people will because they always do.

John Samson (1946 - 2004) was a truly great documentary maker. He must be as I’ve been obsessed with his work for many years. Educated first at Glasgow School Of Art (circa 1963) and then finally in the art of film making at The National Film And Television School in Beaconsfield - he headed there in its opening year of 1971 having made a short film that got him a scholarship.

It was at the NFTS that Samson met Mike Wallington, who was to become his right hand man and eventual producer; together as a quite brilliant team they made a handful of inspiring, entertaining and hugely prescient films about important, overlooked, unseen and marginal fringes in society. Tattoo (1975) Exploring the rather clandestine world of tattooing in the UK. Dressing For Pleasure (1977) Exploring the rather clandestine world of festish in the UK. Brittania (1979) A film about railway enthusiasts and a steam train restoration.

Arrows (1979) The life of dart player Eric Bristow. Drag Ball (1981) An unreleased film about the annual Porchester Hall Drag Ball. The Skin Horse (1983) BAFTA winning film about The Outsiders Club, a dating agency for disabled people. The subject matter in all films was always unusual for the time, and Samson managed to navigate his way with compassion, interest and subtlety, immersing himself in the chosen scene and producing moving, fascinating and sometimes darkly amusing situations. His documentaries also do not rely on traditional voiceovers, with stories, facts and narrative threads being dictated by the subjects.

I’ve tried for a long time to find the music for a couple of his early films (there was actually an original 7” for Arrows) - so far this is the only unreleased soundtrack I have found. This one was written by Steve Jolliffe, who met Samson at the NFTS. Joliffe was the resident composer and had a room at the college complex where he could work on scores for the fledgling film makers. Jolliffe was and still is a multi-instrumentalist and prolific composer who had met Edgar Froese at the Berlin Konservatorium in the late 1960s and played in an early incarnation of Tangerine Dream. He toured with blues rock outfit Steamhammer, before hanging out at the NFTS, making this recording (and many others) and eventually rejoining Tangerine Dream in the late 1970s. Jolliffe still writes, records and releases today and once i had made contact with him we traced the original Tattoo master tape to a box at his brother’s house. Musically it’s charming, slightly folky, a touch baroque, there’s a whiff of prog too, and it perfectly suited this early documentary about the art and desire of tattoos. I only wish it was longer. But the film is only 16 minutes long. Seek it out if you can. Try and find all the Samson films, they really are a joy.

As well as featuring intimate footage of tattooed people, the film also includes a rare and very early interview with Alan Oversby (better known as Mr Sebastian), a seminal character in the development of tattoos and body modifications worldwide - it was he who eventually was to tattoo and pierce Genesis P-Orridge.

The images for this vinyl release were all found in Mike Wallington’s Tattoo documentary research folder from 1974, and were photos sent in to Mike and John by people who wanted to feature in the film. Most answered an advert in Time Out, and others included people from my home town of Aldershot where tattooist Bill Skuse and his wife, Rusty (the most tattooed woman in Britain at the time, and featured in the film) were based. His parlour was situated at the back of the arcade where we all used to lose all our pocket money in the slot machines.
The Musicians:
Steve Jolliffe - keyboards, flute, sax Geoff Jolliffe - bass guitar Julian Furniss - guitar Mick Kirby - drums

No. is the tenth Soft Riot album by Glasgow-based Canadian synth auteur Jack Duckworth (also known as JJD). With origins from the mid-nineties in the vibrant art-punk/hardcore dominating the West Coast American/ Canadian underground at the time, he has clocked in over twenty five years of musical output in various bands and projects.

No. is the logical follow-up to When Push Comes To Shove, released in November 2019 on the Glasgow UK-based label Possession Records, which saw some critical acclaim in the increasingly diverse synthwave scene — a crystallization of the artist’s signature “SynthLord” sound.

With No. things have been shaken up and pushed into new directions. Many different factors came into play, including the conditions of the pandemic lockdowns and an urge for listening to music favourites from beyond his own scene informed developments on this new record. One key feature of these tracks is that under these conditions they were developed as individual pieces — a contrasting approach from previous albums where tracks were written with an album in mind. An evaluation of all of these individual tracks in the summer of 2022 unveiled a common pattern going through these new compositions.

One can still hear any number of echoes of the spirits of original synth artists in his sound, such as Images in Vogue, The Box, Section 25, Thomas Dolby, Skinny Puppy, Chrome, Cabaret Voltaire, Fad Gadget, Japan and Bill Nelson. However, some of Jack’s halcyon punk influences surface as well, taking inspiration from legendary punk/hardcore labels such as Dischord and Gravity, as listening habits over pandemic steered back towards more guitar-based styles. The introduction of expanded production techniques, experiments with vocal styles and tones, and stylistic shifts mark a progression of Soft Riot’s sound. The result is a snarkier, urgent and more playful, with a focus on pure synthpop, new wave, art-punk, proto-EBM as well as grittier synth-punk and post-punk tones.

The variation, energy and tone of this collection of tracks illustrates Soft Riot’s ability to transcend the hallmarks of today’s music environment, which increasingly is fragmenting into smaller and smaller micro-genres. Dry wit and dark humour take the lyrics and the tone of this album on a fun ride through music scenes, dark alleys and inside jokes.

Now here's a cover album with a few interesting angles to it -
First there is the fact that Matthews Southern Comfort have a, let's call it:
Woodstock history - Well over 6 million spotify streams confirm the
legendary status of Matthews Southern Comfort's global hit
And of course: although this collection is called the Woodstock Album, the song
itself is not featured on this album as it was written post festival and therefor
never performed at Mac Yasgur's farm.
In 2022 MSC were looking for a way to reactivate the band as a viable and touring
unit again. The concept they came up with was a Matthews Southern Comfort reinterpretation of songs that were all performed at the Festival by artists like Joe
Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, John Sebastian and The
Grateful Dead
The songs very much speak for themselves, as do these new versions with a
distinct Matthews Southern Comfort signature.

Bush Tetras have made punk music at the fringes for over four decades. Flashes of reggae, bursts of noise, guitars that rattle, shake and snake, born out of a gutter behind CBGBs. Over the years they have respawned time and time again, contorting their sound, tweaking the vision, remaining singular and indispensable. In the late 2010s the group-Pat Place, Cynthia Sley, and Dee Pop-reformed again, releasing an EP, Take the Fall, in 2018. It was their first offering of new music in over a decade. A few years later in, 2021, they released a career spanning box set called Rhythm and Paranoia. The New York Times called the box set an artifact that "proves for decades that Bush Tetras continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive directions." Around the same time, the band began working on a full length record, writing sessions during the pandemic over Zoom. Right before the release of the box set, beloved drummer Dee Pop passed away. Determined to complete the record to honor his memory, the Tetras went into the studio to finish what they'd started, once the timing was right. They brought in a new drummer, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, who also served as producer. Enter They Live in My Head. The band's 3rd official LP (a misleading fact when viewed along - side a catalog as expansive as it is influential), They Live in My Head is a collection of songs that sometimes reflect on the past and sometimes reckon with our current reality. From "Ghosts of People," on which Pat Place's legendary guitar meanders through closed doors and portals, to the scorching "2020 Vision," a matter- of-fact call to arms to get on the streets and get something done, the album addresses new and old, in both abstract and specific terms. But whether they're looking forward or backward, Bush Tetras have always been a political band, a band that calls out all kinds of bullshit. And, in that sense, They Live in My Head is absolutely no exception.

Bush Tetras have made punk music at the fringes for over four decades. Flashes of reggae, bursts of noise, guitars that rattle, shake and snake, born out of a gutter behind CBGBs. Over the years they have respawned time and time again, contorting their sound, tweaking the vision, remaining singular and indispensable. In the late 2010s the group-Pat Place, Cynthia Sley, and Dee Pop-reformed again, releasing an EP, Take the Fall, in 2018. It was their first offering of new music in over a decade. A few years later in, 2021, they released a career spanning box set called Rhythm and Paranoia. The New York Times called the box set an artifact that "proves for decades that Bush Tetras continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive directions." Around the same time, the band began working on a full length record, writing sessions during the pandemic over Zoom. Right before the release of the box set, beloved drummer Dee Pop passed away. Determined to complete the record to honor his memory, the Tetras went into the studio to finish what they'd started, once the timing was right. They brought in a new drummer, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, who also served as producer. Enter They Live in My Head. The band's 3rd official LP (a misleading fact when viewed along - side a catalog as expansive as it is influential), They Live in My Head is a collection of songs that sometimes reflect on the past and sometimes reckon with our current reality. From "Ghosts of People," on which Pat Place's legendary guitar meanders through closed doors and portals, to the scorching "2020 Vision," a matter- of-fact call to arms to get on the streets and get something done, the album addresses new and old, in both abstract and specific terms. But whether they're looking forward or backward, Bush Tetras have always been a political band, a band that calls out all kinds of bullshit. And, in that sense, They Live in My Head is absolutely no exception.

The Counts formed in Michigan in 1964 as the Fabulous Counts, releasing two singles, ‘Jan Jan’ and ‘Get Down People’ on the Moira label in 1968 and 1969 that became R&B chart hits. This led to the album “Jan Jan”, issued by Cotillion in 1969.

Snapped up by Westbound, the line-up that recorded “What’s Up Front That Counts” included Mose Davis (Organ), Leroy Emmanuel (guitar), Demetrius Cates (sax) and Andrew Gibson (drums). Although tenor player Jim White is on the front cover, he left the band shortly before the album was recorded. Extended, mostly instrumental tracks like ‘Why Not Start All Over Again’ and the title track are now recognized as some of the juiciest funk ever laid down in the studio. Shorter tracks like ‘Rhythm Changes’, ‘Thinking Single’ and ‘Bills’ are equally sweet. What gives the album such powerful musical chemistry was the fact that the Counts were jazz players weaned on the likes of Miles Davis who were also into the funk of James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone so every track features groove-driven interplay. One might argue this is the sound that Miles Davis was trying to find on his early 70s albums.

The Counts were to tour with Funkadelic and record more singles and albums but it is this 1971 offering that is, and remains, an all-time classic. Indeed, the track ‘What’s Up Front That Counts’ has been sampled by artists like Queen Latifah and Eric B & Rakim, keeping the music of the Counts firmly in the minds of a young contemporary audience.

Out of print on vinyl for nearly two decades, Ace is proud to reissue this beauty

Ltd Coloured Vinyl - Indies Only!

Die Punkrock- und Metal-Superhelden MUTOID MAN - bestehend aus CAVE IN-Sänger/Gitarrist Steven Brodsky, CONVERGE-Schlagzeuger Ben Koller und dem neu hinzugekommenen HIGH ON FIRE-Bassisten Jeff Matz - haben ihr neues Album angekündigt: "Mutants", erscheint am 28. Juli via Sargent House! Brodsky und Koller, die eine fast telepathische Chemie besitzen, haben sich schon immer dadurch ausgezeichnet, dass sie ihre eigene, einzigartige Art von rasendem, hyperfokussiertem, dynamischem und exzessivem Griffbrett-versiertem Metal kreieren. Wenn man zwei Musiker nimmt, die in der Hardcore-Welt aufgewachsen sind und schnell die technischen Anforderungen übertrafen, um selbst die anspruchsvolleren Varianten dieses Sounds zu spielen, und sie dann dazu bringt, sich gegenseitig spielerisch in unverschämte und eingängige Gefilde zu drängen, erhält man eine grobe Annäherung an den MUTOID MAN-Sound. Aber mit dem neuen Bassisten Jeff Matz im Schlepptau hat man nun ein Dreiergespann von Prog-Level-Spielern, die sich dem Metal mit punkiger Respektlosigkeit nähern, auf "Mutants", einem Album, das ihre bisher gelungenste und verblüffendste Leistung darstellt. Nach dem Erfolg ihrer Debüt-EP "Helium Head" (2013) legte die Band in den nächsten vier Jahren eine manische Arbeitsmoral an den Tag, brachte die beiden Alben "Bleeder" (2015) und "War Moans" (2017) heraus, tourte unermüdlich durch die USA und Europa und wurde nebenbei so etwas wie eine De-facto-Hausband des angesagten New Yorker Metal-Clubs Saint Vitus. Mit Tourdaten im Vorprogramm von Acts wie MASTODON und DANZIG schien es, als sei MUTOID MANs Eintritt in die Oberliga der Heavy Metal-Helden unvermeidlich. Doch zwischen Besetzungswechseln, einem Exodus aus Brooklyn, einer Reihe anderer musikalischer Projekte und einer Pandemie wurde die Band inmitten ihres Aufstiegs auf Eis gelegt. Aber nach einer sechsjährigen Aufnahmepause sind MUTOID MAN zurück, um mit "Mutants" ihren Thron zurückzuerobern

Mike Cooper wrote his final songwriter record, a suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio, while living on the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain, an era when he was considering retiring from music altogether. A chance encounter and a last-ditch record deal convinced him to make one last album, which he recorded in 1974 at Pathway Studios in London, with “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World,” featuring the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller with UK saxophonist Mike Osborne. This first-ever reissue includes a bonus CD of Milan Live Acoustic 2018, a previously unreleased solo set that represents Cooper’s return, after forty-four years pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, steel guitar, and songcraft. The deluxe LP+CD edition also features a six-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. The deluxe 2xCD gatefold edition features an eight-panel version of the same insert. In the wake of his magisterial triptych of early 1970s avant-folk-rock records Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971), and The Machine Gun Co. (1972) the British songwriter, guitarist, and fledgling improviser Mike Cooper retreated to the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain. With no prospects for touring or recording again, his fiery band the Machine Gun Co. had disintegrated. Cooper sets the scene in his liner notes of the first-ever reissue of his unjustly forgotten next album Life and Death in Paradise (1974): No one came running with offers of fame and riches, and we fell apart, and I left the country and headed for the beach, disillusioned and a bit disorientated musically. I went to Almuñécar in Andalusia, a place I had been going since 1969, because a painter friend from Reading, Rowland Fade who made the collage in the gatefold of my earlier album Trout Steel had moved there in 1968. It was in this synthetic coastal “paradise,” unmoored and adrift, considering retiring from music altogether, that he began tentatively writing new songs. A chance encounter with producer Tony Hall, who offered Cooper a last-ditch record deal on Hall’s nascent Fresh Air label, convinced him to make one last album with the stipulation that he could assemble what he called “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.” I told Tony that I would do it if I could hire some of my South African jazz musician friends that I had used on my Pye/Dawn albums and some friends from Reading that I still knew and admired. I called up Harry Miller, Louis Moholo, and Mike Osborne, who were in fact a trio at the time … and several local Reading heroes, including the singer-songwriter Terry Clarke. The result, recorded live with minimal overdubbing at Pathway Studios in London, was Life and Death in Paradise, an utterly singular suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio comprising the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Moholo and Miller with UK saxophonist Osborne. Unlike anything else in Cooper’s extensive catalog. Fresh Air fizzled, and Life and Death became Cooper’s final record as a songwriter, having pushed the form as far as he could. Drifting north from Spain back to the UK, he fell into the scene of the London Musicians Collective (LMC) including Paul Burwell, David Toop, and saxophonist Lol Coxhill, Cooper’s bandmate in the Recedents and fully embraced free improvisation. He was still, however, interested in singing and lyrics, so, influenced by Tom Phillips, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin, he began experimenting with text collage and cut-up techniques, arriving at his own hybrid compositional strategy for improvisatory songs. The previously unreleased solo set Milan Live Acoustic 2018 represents Cooper’s return, after more than four decades pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, lap steel guitar, and songcraft. Presented here together with Life and Death in Paradise, the two records provide fascinating bookends to Mike Cooper’s long, mercurial, and pioneering practice as a songmaker.

Heels & Souls Recordings step back to 1988 for their sixth reissue, relicensing and remastering Flair's anthemic soul number 'Chasin' The Rain.' For the uninitiated, strap yourself in for six blissful minutes of heavy bass licks, soaring vocals, and infectious synth lines.

Consisting of Janet Rose (aka UK Soul queen JB Rose), Joe Matz, Peter Bielig, and Peter Shindler, Flair was a predominantly German affair, with Rose being the only UK band member and Bieling living in London during the late '80s. This is a curious detail considering 'Chasin' The Rain' is often lauded today as a UK Soul classic - partially due to its release on the prolific UK label Champion. However, it's squeaky-clean production values, and the fact it was mixed and mastered at the famous Jankowski studio in Stuttgart by three Germans, reveals a somewhat different story.

The track has that UK street soul heavy low-end, but with a synth-pop flavour sprinkled in the mix - swinging synth lines and gated snares aplenty. Yet from chatting to Peter Bielig, who's been instrumental in getting this record reissued, the sounds sweeping across the Atlantic from the likes of Jam and Lewis, who blended R&B, funk, soul and pop, were clearly a big influence too.

Those were heady days for four young twenty-something musicians, with Peter recalling cherished memories these tracks bring back, telling of his and JB's PA sessions at London's Gulliver's nightclub. However, while 'Chasin' The Rain' had all the hallmarks of a chart-breaking hit, Champion prioritised other projects and the record never broke. Sadly the group disbanded after only two releases, and this musical gem was consigned to the crates of those in the know. Soon after, Peter Bielig went to Jamaica to work at Tough Gong Studios, working on albums for Rita Marley Music. He now lives in Brazil, producing local artists in his studio in Salvador.

Unfortunately, the master tapes were nowhere to be found, so we had the maestro, Sean P, rip and restore a mint copy of the record, with award-winning mastering engineer Cicely Balston working her studio magic for that added punch.

Thomas Brinkmann creates a new moniker for his latest project to push technical limitations and challenge perceptions; classic Brinkmann agendas. Mele is Italian for Apples, and with Mele Boy, Thomas Brinkmann uses Apple Loops and Apple Logic Pro as the foundation of this music, invoking what he terms Apple Incest, apropos the controversy surrounding Serge Gainsbourg and the song Lemon Incest. What he has produced here for the Seduction ep is simply brilliant music regardless of the machines used or the sounds he works with, reinforcing the axiom that it's the artist not the tools that establishes the greatness of the work.. Those who are prejudiced against such ubiquitous tools may not be swayed. But Brinkmann is not attempting to change opinions, instead he is asking us to challenge our perceptions and the fact that we have prejudices at all... through some brilliant music for the body and the soul.

Pelican and Thrill Jockey are proud to present a deluxe edition of the band"s acclaimed 2005 album The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw, newly remixed, remastered and featuring special bonus rarities including an early version of "Red Ran Amber," (previously only available on a split with MONO) and demos of "Autumn Into Summer," "Last Day of Winter" and "Sirius". The Fire In Our Throats established Pelican as indisputable masters of their craft. Pelican"s ability to alchemize their influences into a sound so wholly original and then expand on that sound into a work of captivating beauty remains a marvel. The album indelibly shifted the paradigm of heavy music and the ripples of that shift can be heard in the countless bands who have risen to prominence since its release. The genre-busting nature of the album"s melodicism and refined dynamics was a harbinger of things to come in a genre whose strict boundaries were rapidly being shattered; a fact recognized and cemented by the album"s critical reception, which engendered everything from an Album of the Year nod from Decibel, to pontifications about Pelican representing a rising wave of intellectualism in metal from the New York Times. Nearly two decades since the album"s release on Hydra Head Records, The Fire In Our Throats has stood as not just one of the band"s most celebrated releases, but as a watershed work of avant-metal. The album arrives with a fresh mix by its original engineer Greg Norman and mastering by Josh Bonati, imbibing the songs with a new ferocity while also granting increased clarity, highlighting the developing interplay between each member. The refreshed mix brings an additional punch to the rhythm section of bassist Bryan Herweg and drummer Larry Herweg, bolstering the brightened melodicism and interlocking riffing between guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec. The more articulate presentation of the album showcases the power of each individual player while buttressing Pelican"s distinct sound as a unified force.

Pelican and Thrill Jockey are proud to present a deluxe edition of the band"s acclaimed 2005 album The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw, newly remixed, remastered and featuring special bonus rarities including an early version of "Red Ran Amber," (previously only available on a split with MONO) and demos of "Autumn Into Summer," "Last Day of Winter" and "Sirius". The Fire In Our Throats established Pelican as indisputable masters of their craft. Pelican"s ability to alchemize their influences into a sound so wholly original and then expand on that sound into a work of captivating beauty remains a marvel. The album indelibly shifted the paradigm of heavy music and the ripples of that shift can be heard in the countless bands who have risen to prominence since its release. The genre-busting nature of the album"s melodicism and refined dynamics was a harbinger of things to come in a genre whose strict boundaries were rapidly being shattered; a fact recognized and cemented by the album"s critical reception, which engendered everything from an Album of the Year nod from Decibel, to pontifications about Pelican representing a rising wave of intellectualism in metal from the New York Times. Nearly two decades since the album"s release on Hydra Head Records, The Fire In Our Throats has stood as not just one of the band"s most celebrated releases, but as a watershed work of avant-metal. The album arrives with a fresh mix by its original engineer Greg Norman and mastering by Josh Bonati, imbibing the songs with a new ferocity while also granting increased clarity, highlighting the developing interplay between each member. The refreshed mix brings an additional punch to the rhythm section of bassist Bryan Herweg and drummer Larry Herweg, bolstering the brightened melodicism and interlocking riffing between guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec. The more articulate presentation of the album showcases the power of each individual player while buttressing Pelican"s distinct sound as a unified force.

‘Lindstrøm returns with his sixth studio album Everyone Else is a Stranger, and the first since 2019’s On a Clear Day I Can See You Forever. The title of the album was inspired by John Cassavetes’ original title for his 1984 film Love Streams, and contains four tracks of his signature chord-stacking disco epics and freeform cosmic voyages, stretching across nearly 40 minutes. An album that in many ways sums up his career, and gathers his different musical paths into one sound and one album.

Where his previous album had a slower and more mellow feel, 2023’s Everyone Else is a Stranger sees Lindstrøm take on a much more rhythm-oriented and uptempo approach, containing tracks that fit perfect with the artist’s revered live sets. That said, this album also contains the unexpected twists and turns that has become the Norwegian producer’s trademark, including recordings of him playing a cheap Chinese cello and violin for the first time alongside the old Solina String-Ensemble he has used on essentially every track since his debut.

Named «the king of space disco» by The New Yorker, Lindstrøm has always made a virtue of his obsessive work ethic, turning his city center studio into a factory floor for churning out monster tracks. He has collaborated with the likes of Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Todd Rundgren, has remixed a slew of acts including LCD Soundsystem, Lana del Rey, Haim, Grizzly Bear, Flume, RAC, London Grammar and more.’

In 1983 there came a sound from the depths of the Brazilian rainforest that was primal, ground-breaking, and completely ahead of its time. The roaring of amplifiers and the beating of drums was the sound of Max and Iggor Cavalera creating their debut cult-classics 'MORBID VISIONS' and 'BESTIAL DEVASTATION', and now it seems that after many years, the Cavalera brothers will be returning to their raw upstarts with a full re-recording of these beloved yet obscure albums.
When 'MORBID VISIONS' and 'BESTIAL DEVASTATION" were first spawned it was done in ramshackle conditions in Belo Horizonte, where the duo grew up. Max and Iggor were 14 and 13 years old during the original recording, and they had all the tenacity and energy of a pack of wild dogs. Only, their sound was not quite refined at that time, their adolescence bled through on those early records. It is well known that Max's guitars were completely out of tune on those sessions, and Iggor's drums often swung around tempos crazily. There's an air of youth and passion that could only be achieved by two teenagers that wanted to shock the world. Four decades later and it is plain to see that they certainly did gather the world's attention.
Despite the production being rough around the edges and the band still carving out their direction, there was a noticeable level of craftsmanship to the song structures and a clear indication that given their desire to thrash like maniacs, these kids from Brazil were going to tear the place up night after night. These albums still hold a dark, mystic and at times eerie quality to them that many have come to love over the years. For some, the music does not have to be delivered with perfect technical precision, the spastic live delivery is something to be cherished, and even with their guitars out of tune, they played like the gates of hell were opening. The crossroads of a shamanistic spiritual summoning at a back-alley metal show in downtown Belo Horizonte.
It is a task of heavy magnitude to try and cross the gap between the accomplished artists that they are today to the scrappy boys that they were when they first wrote these songs, but the duo have executed the performances flawlessly. The perfect bridge between the unbridled energy of the original sessions and the high-quality sound of a 21st century production. It is truly astounding to hear Max once again growl like a monster during "Troops Of Doom" and riff at insane speeds through "War" and "Crucifixion". Iggor's barbaric drumming on "Anti-Christ" is like the galloping hooves of a death-rider. Accompanied by bassist Igor Amadeus Cavalera (HEALING MAGIC, GO AHEAD AND DIE) and lead guitarist Daniel Gonzales (POSSESSED, GRUESOME) the quartet is a force to be reckoned with.
How this re-recording attained such a familiar tenacity is almost a mystery, like some spell that brought these albums back from the grave. Within the first few beats you can hear that the Cavalera’s have lost no momentum, attacking the songs at maximum speed and ferocity. In fact, it seems that the brothers have only empowered their connection through music over the decades. You can feel the spark that those two create, a dynamic sound rich with subtleties and ear-grabbing hooks. As Iggor counts in each song with his drumsticks, and Max's guitar feedbacks loudly as he approaches the microphone, there is palpable apprehension. It is apparent that when these two icons get together to play, they are going to electrify the room with their presence.
Few have had the incredible careers that Max and Iggor have achieved through their music. Even fewer had faith in the young boys that wrote 'MORBID VISIONS' and "BESTIAL DEVASTATION' all those years ago. Yet here they still stand ripping through their earliest works with decades of experience under their belts. For them, it is a breath of fresh air to finally give these songs the desired production that they deserve. They both feel that the fans also deserve a fresh look at these albums, a chance to appreciate them in a completely new light.
From start to finish 'MORBID VISIONS" and "BESTIAL DEVASTATION" are a torrential whirlwind of riffs, beats, and screams. A blast from the past that is sure to take every last listener back to the raucous live shows of the eighties.
Mysterious clouds form above an old cathedral, the summoning of dark magic is upon us, and the troops of doom march forth to announce the arrival of 'CAVALERA'!

We are delighted to announce that July 2023 is the month in which you will finally be able to know the new Apparel Wax product: Apparel Wax Mini. The Mini catalogue (dedicated to 7-inch vinyl) fits into the narrative of our masked hero as a sort of prequel, as the 'Mini' vinyl represents the 'childhood' of Apparel Wax, his life before its music started to be heard around the world. Another novelty is that the first release is double. In fact, APLWAXMINI001 and 002 will drop on the same day, both containing two tracks, one on each side. With a physical product of different size, we have also adapted the graphic design of the project, as you'll notice looking at the record. A new adventure begins in the world of the masked artist who, this time, will tell another musical story created by the now famous anonymous collective of phenomenal artists behind the project. APLWAX002's A side features a dynamic Disco/Dance touch and a vibrant funky feel while B side has a more Lo-Fi taste and a powerful rhythm section, both combining to create a burst of rhythm.

Supermodels ist eine Platte, in der man sich selbst wiedererkennen kann, egal wie alt man ist oder wo man steht. Clauds fesselndes und ergreifendes zweites Album ist ein selbstbewusstes Tagebuch über das Quecksilber des Lebens und der Liebe in den frühen 20ern, ob es nun die Selbstzweifel sind, die sich durch die Songs schleichen, oder der Ort des Kompromisses, den sie zu finden versuchen. Es ist eine exakte Karte der emotionalen und logistischen Wechselfälle, denen sie in ihren frühen 20ern begegnet sind. Risse in Romanzen und Freundschaften, der Druck der Plattenkarriere, die Verluste des Erwachsenwerdens: Jeder dieser 13 Songs ist ein weiterer artikulierter Tagebucheintrag, der ohne Rücksicht auf das Genre und mit der Achterbahn der Gefühle zusammengefügt wurde, die jedem Stück eine so spezifische Schwere verleiht. Für Claud sind dies vertraute Themen, die zum Teil das gleiche Terrain abdecken wie Super Monster von 2021. Aber die Ideen haben ein neues Selbstvertrauen, das sich in Strukturen und Hooks ausdrückt, die nicht zweideutig sind, wenn sie sich von stirnrunzelndem Folk über ungestümen Pop bis hin zu verdrehten Klavierkuriositäten bewegen. Während Supermodels größtenteils im Schlafzimmer ihrer Kindheit entstanden ist, wurde dieses Album an einem eigenen Ort aufgenommen und von einem Team von Vertrauten und Mitarbeitern zu prächtigen Produktionen ausgebaut. Supermodels hat seinen Namen aus dem Albumsong „Screwdriver“. „You caught me looking at photographs of supermodels“, singen sie, wobei sich ihre Stimme langsam über die elegische Zeile erhebt, die auf dem kaputten Klavier geschrieben wurde. "Trying not to cry when I look back at myself". Es ist ein erschütternder Moment, eine Erinnerung daran, wie wir alle daran arbeiten, uns nicht mehr als minderwertig und nicht gleichwertig zu sehen, um ein Dutzend verschiedener Unsicherheiten zu überwinden, die wir in den tiefsten Nischen unserer Fassade zu speichern versuchen. Aber Claud verbirgt bei Supermodels nichts. Es sind Kerne der Verzweiflung, der Erlösung und letztlich der Einsicht, die uns daran erinnern, dass wir weder die Ersten noch die Letzten sind, die sich diesem Blues stellen und weitermachen.

Supermodels ist eine Platte, in der man sich selbst wiedererkennen kann, egal wie alt man ist oder wo man steht. Clauds fesselndes und ergreifendes zweites Album ist ein selbstbewusstes Tagebuch über das Quecksilber des Lebens und der Liebe in den frühen 20ern, ob es nun die Selbstzweifel sind, die sich durch die Songs schleichen, oder der Ort des Kompromisses, den sie zu finden versuchen. Es ist eine exakte Karte der emotionalen und logistischen Wechselfälle, denen sie in ihren frühen 20ern begegnet sind. Risse in Romanzen und Freundschaften, der Druck der Plattenkarriere, die Verluste des Erwachsenwerdens: Jeder dieser 13 Songs ist ein weiterer artikulierter Tagebucheintrag, der ohne Rücksicht auf das Genre und mit der Achterbahn der Gefühle zusammengefügt wurde, die jedem Stück eine so spezifische Schwere verleiht. Für Claud sind dies vertraute Themen, die zum Teil das gleiche Terrain abdecken wie Super Monster von 2021. Aber die Ideen haben ein neues Selbstvertrauen, das sich in Strukturen und Hooks ausdrückt, die nicht zweideutig sind, wenn sie sich von stirnrunzelndem Folk über ungestümen Pop bis hin zu verdrehten Klavierkuriositäten bewegen. Während Supermodels größtenteils im Schlafzimmer ihrer Kindheit entstanden ist, wurde dieses Album an einem eigenen Ort aufgenommen und von einem Team von Vertrauten und Mitarbeitern zu prächtigen Produktionen ausgebaut. Supermodels hat seinen Namen aus dem Albumsong „Screwdriver“. „You caught me looking at photographs of supermodels“, singen sie, wobei sich ihre Stimme langsam über die elegische Zeile erhebt, die auf dem kaputten Klavier geschrieben wurde. "Trying not to cry when I look back at myself". Es ist ein erschütternder Moment, eine Erinnerung daran, wie wir alle daran arbeiten, uns nicht mehr als minderwertig und nicht gleichwertig zu sehen, um ein Dutzend verschiedener Unsicherheiten zu überwinden, die wir in den tiefsten Nischen unserer Fassade zu speichern versuchen. Aber Claud verbirgt bei Supermodels nichts. Es sind Kerne der Verzweiflung, der Erlösung und letztlich der Einsicht, die uns daran erinnern, dass wir weder die Ersten noch die Letzten sind, die sich diesem Blues stellen und weitermachen.

Supermodels ist eine Platte, in der man sich selbst wiedererkennen kann, egal wie alt man ist oder wo man steht. Clauds fesselndes und ergreifendes zweites Album ist ein selbstbewusstes Tagebuch über das Quecksilber des Lebens und der Liebe in den frühen 20ern, ob es nun die Selbstzweifel sind, die sich durch die Songs schleichen, oder der Ort des Kompromisses, den sie zu finden versuchen. Es ist eine exakte Karte der emotionalen und logistischen Wechselfälle, denen sie in ihren frühen 20ern begegnet sind. Risse in Romanzen und Freundschaften, der Druck der Plattenkarriere, die Verluste des Erwachsenwerdens: Jeder dieser 13 Songs ist ein weiterer artikulierter Tagebucheintrag, der ohne Rücksicht auf das Genre und mit der Achterbahn der Gefühle zusammengefügt wurde, die jedem Stück eine so spezifische Schwere verleiht. Für Claud sind dies vertraute Themen, die zum Teil das gleiche Terrain abdecken wie Super Monster von 2021. Aber die Ideen haben ein neues Selbstvertrauen, das sich in Strukturen und Hooks ausdrückt, die nicht zweideutig sind, wenn sie sich von stirnrunzelndem Folk über ungestümen Pop bis hin zu verdrehten Klavierkuriositäten bewegen. Während Supermodels größtenteils im Schlafzimmer ihrer Kindheit entstanden ist, wurde dieses Album an einem eigenen Ort aufgenommen und von einem Team von Vertrauten und Mitarbeitern zu prächtigen Produktionen ausgebaut. Supermodels hat seinen Namen aus dem Albumsong „Screwdriver“. „You caught me looking at photographs of supermodels“, singen sie, wobei sich ihre Stimme langsam über die elegische Zeile erhebt, die auf dem kaputten Klavier geschrieben wurde. "Trying not to cry when I look back at myself". Es ist ein erschütternder Moment, eine Erinnerung daran, wie wir alle daran arbeiten, uns nicht mehr als minderwertig und nicht gleichwertig zu sehen, um ein Dutzend verschiedener Unsicherheiten zu überwinden, die wir in den tiefsten Nischen unserer Fassade zu speichern versuchen. Aber Claud verbirgt bei Supermodels nichts. Es sind Kerne der Verzweiflung, der Erlösung und letztlich der Einsicht, die uns daran erinnern, dass wir weder die Ersten noch die Letzten sind, die sich diesem Blues stellen und weitermachen.

Lindstrom returns with his sixth studio album Everyone Else is a Stranger, and the first since 2019's On a Clear Day I Can See You Forever. The title of the album was inspired by John Cassavetes' original title for his 1984 film Love Streams, and contains four tracks of his signature chord-stacking disco epics and freeform cosmic voyages, stretching across nearly 40 minutes. An album that in many ways sums up his career, and gathers his different musical paths into one sound and one album. Where his previous album had a slower and more mellow feel, 2023's Everyone Else is a Stranger sees Lindstrom take on a much more rhythm-oriented and uptempo approach, containing tracks that fit perfect with the artist's revered live sets. That said, this album also contains the unexpected twists and turns that has become the Norwegian producer's trademark, including recordings of him playing a cheap Chinese cello and violin for the first time alongside the old Solina String-Ensemble he has used on essentially every track since his debut. Named "the king of space disco" by The New Yorker, Lindstrom has always made a virtue of his obsessive work ethic, turning his city center studio into a factory floor for churning out monster tracks. He has collaborated with the likes of Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Todd Rundgren, has remixed a slew of acts including LCD Soundsystem, Lana del Rey, Haim, Grizzly Bear, Flume, RAC, London Grammar and more.

No More Sound, Sad Park’s third full-length, begins with an ending. More specifically, with its own ending. Because the short, just-over-a-minute-long “No More Songs” is kind of a stripped-down reprise of the title track that closes this record. In one way, it means this album—the band’s first for Pure Noise—travels back in time over its 38 or so minutes, but in another it’s also traveling forwards. Because while “No More Sound” is a more fleshed-out version of “No More Songs”, it also contains melodic and lyrical throwbacks to the eleven songs that sit between them. Perhaps more importantly, as everything comes full circle on the record, it offers something that the opener doesn’t. Recorded across ten days at Balboa Studios in Los Angeles, No More Sound is, in fact, the sound of a band really coming into their own.

No More Sound, Sad Park’s third full-length, begins with an ending. More specifically, with its own ending. Because the short, just-over-a-minute-long “No More Songs” is kind of a stripped-down reprise of the title track that closes this record. In one way, it means this album—the band’s first for Pure Noise—travels back in time over its 38 or so minutes, but in another it’s also traveling forwards. Because while “No More Sound” is a more fleshed-out version of “No More Songs”, it also contains melodic and lyrical throwbacks to the eleven songs that sit between them. Perhaps more importantly, as everything comes full circle on the record, it offers something that the opener doesn’t. Recorded across ten days at Balboa Studios in Los Angeles, No More Sound is, in fact, the sound of a band really coming into their own.

Yo! Boombox is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ Boombox series on the early days of hip-hop on vinyl and features some of the many innovative underground first-wave of early rap and disco rap records made in the USA in the period 1979-83.

The album includes the first releases of seminal groups such as Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five and The Funky Four Plus One More through to a host of rarities and little-known obscurities such as the Carver Area High School band’s ‘Get Live 83’, an awesome record made at a Chicago high school.


The album is released as a deluxe triple LP complete with 3x full inner sleeves of extensive sleeve notes, exclusive photography and original label artwork. There is also a very-limited one-pressing only special deluxe version that comes with an extra bonus super-rare 7” single of ‘Magic’s Rap’ by Magic’s Trick, aka ex-marine Magic Fraga, a record that was only ever available on US military bases!


Yo! Boombox also features the stunning photography of Sophie Bramly, one of a very select group of photographers (alongside Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, and Joe Conzo) who were allowed full access to document the exciting early days of hip-hop in New York.
These first exuberant wave of innocent, upbeat, party-on-the-block rap records were the first to try and create the sounds heard in community centres, block parties and street jams that first took place in the Bronx in the mid-1970s. Where the first DJs – Flash, Kool Herc and Bambaataa – were back-spinning, mixing and scratching together now classic breakbeat records like The Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache or Babe Ruth’s The Mexican, these first pre-sampling rap records were all made using live bands, often replaying then current disco tunes.

As Chic’s ‘Good Times’ was to ‘Rappers’ Delight’, the songs here feature then-current dancefloor hits such as the Tom Tom Club’s ‘Genius of Love’, Cheryl Lynn’s ‘To Be Real’, MFSB’s ‘Love Is the Message’ while MCs rapped over the top, creating a unique new sound. In fact, the links between disco and rap date back earlier to the ‘party style’ MCing of figures such as the legendary DJ Hollywood or radio DJs like Frankie Crocker.

This new Soul Jazz Records collection
celebrates these first old-school rap
records, bringing together rare, classic
and obscure tracks released in the
early days of rap.

It is also one of only five sessions led by Little as a band leader before his premature death at the age of 23 in 1961. The fact that this is only Little's third outing as a leader is further testament to the talents of this young artist. Arguably, the seven original compositions here might be more widely known today had his life not been so tragically cut short.

Little is mostly known for this association with Max Roach, who he began playing with as early as 1955. But it was not until 1958 that he officially joined Roach's outfit and began recording with him. Little made 8 albums with Roach between 1958 and 1961. And it is Roach's
ground breaking We Insist! album that is the precursor to the Out Front sessions, as this is where Little's talents fully caught the attention of Candid Records' A&R and producer Nat Hentoff.

From Elvis in Memphis retains the distinction of being the most cohesive, passionate, mature, and emotionally invested record Elvis Presley ever made. Named one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone, the white-soul landmark features backing by "The "Memphis Boys" and teems with rhythm-heavy country, gospel, R&B, and blues. Lauded for its natural, open sonics, the 1969 set now comes across with remarkable clarity, presence, and warmth courtesy of a premium restoration befitting a king.

Mastered from the original master tapes, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and strictly limited to 10,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set of From Elvis in Memphis unearths the ravishing inner detail, sticky rhythms, and brilliant arrangements of Chips Moman's inspired production. In short, this unparalleled reissue unlocks the spirit and gestalt of the recording and takes you inside American Sound Studio. It also brings you up close and personal with Presley's singing – widely considered by many to represent the finest of his career – located dead-centre amidst the instrumental hurricane. Equally impressive are the contributions of the aforementioned Boys, and how their Southern-brewed playing – a balance of leisure with swiftness, grandiosity with concision, freedom with control – dovetails with Presley's vernacular.

The lavish packaging and gorgeous presentation of the UD1S From Elvis in Memphis pressing befit its extremely select status. Housed in a deluxe box, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. No expense has been spared. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artifact meant to be preserved, pored over, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the images to the finishes.

Sharing much in common with the full, rich, orchestrated Stax Records sound, From Elvis in Memphis oozes with choice nuances and distinctive flourishes that on this ultra-hi-fi edition not only arise with previously unheard transparency and sharpness, but complement and serve the whole. Take the specific tonalities and blending of violas, cellos, and horns that communicate mood and serve as counterpoints. Or lively performances of the backing quintet, and how the piano and Hammond organ trace the lines of the melodies and Presley's lead. Listen to the uplifting support provided by the cadre of backing vocalists (more than a dozen credited), unrivalled in Presley's canon and a precursor to the approach he'd soon adopt in Las Vegas.

Of course, From Elvis in Memphis precedes the icon's transition into his glitzy jumpsuit phase – and follows his merciful move away from the hoary soundtrack work that consumed nearly a decade of his creative life and prompted a rebirth that began in 1968. As the bridge between eras, the record seizes on Presley's rejuvenated attitude and commitment to quality, facets that drip from the fervency with which he delivers every word. For the same reasons, and for the fact it traces back to Presley's original roots and hip-shaking guise, the album further remains a cornerstone of American music history.

Writing about the work's 40th anniversary for Rolling Stone, James Hunter correctly observed: "From Elvis in Memphis represented the full-on immersion in the Memphis idea of Elvis Presley, the American singer second only to Frank Sinatra for the ability to conjure a particular sonic universe with his merest vocal utterance. And from the album's first song, in which a bluesy Elvis espies a woman 'Wearin' That Loved On Look,' to its last, in which a more straight-up-pop Elvis regrets the injustices of life 'In the Ghetto,' his fully engaged, newly energized voice finds its most logical album setting in years."

Incredibly, Presley and company completed more than two dozen cuts for From Elvis in Memphis. One, "Suspicious Minds," turned into the vocalist's final chart-topping single and lingers as one of his most beloved rock n' roll numbers. Even though it never formally appeared on the record, the non-album song is included here as a bonus track and attains newfound depth, energy, and swagger. Coupled with the other dozen tracks – including the sultry "Power of My Love," balladic take of Dallas Frazier's "True Love Travels on a Gravel Road," and driving cover of Hank Snow's I'm Moving On" – it makes for the finest Elvis listening experience available.

The post-industrial Ruhr-Area has been an indisputable part of Germany's techno landscape since the very beginning. More than 30 years after techno's golden era and after a manifold challenging pandemic, the scene and its sounds are blooming like never before. Ahmet Sisman and his project The Third Room can be described as key factors for both the area's ongoing, sustainable dedication to electronic music and its current success, being more and more embedded in cultural contexts and society overall.

It's unsurprising that the first album of Ahmet Sisman, the multitalented artist and man of action, is a well-considered mix of familiar and pioneering sounds, enriched by countless influences within and beyond technos constantly evolving sub-genre scenery. With a sophisticated 50/50 mix of four on the floor strikes and innovative breaks, Sisman manages to hit a sweet spot between raw but groovy, experimental but subtle nostalgia, melodious but noisy.

All this is already worthy of a listen, but placed in context, it perfectly fits the musical approach of the Ruhr-Areas biggest transcendental techno project - The Stone Techno Series and Festival. Like the bound-breaking release series of the last two years, 'The Third Space' maintains the metallic and fierce sound vision of a coal mining tradition with everlasting impact. The time travel through industrialization and renaturation continues here with T3R008 and gains a whole new dimension from Sisman's skilled handwriting.

Hi Scores is beyond excited to present SSR Records: In Retrospect. This 2LP compilation album presented in a beautiful gatefold sleeve and through all digital platforms, wishes to highlight the immense and hard to grasp legacy of the Brussels based label. SSR Records was founded in 1988 by Marc Hollander as a sub label of his Crammed Discs and spanned the nascent years of house, acid, rave, trance, new beat, hip-hop, future jazz and broken beat, collaborating internationally and racking up close to 200 releases until it was put to sleep in 2002. Far ahead of their time, SSR Records released music of both European and North American artists that hadn’t broken through yet, such as those collected on this compilation: Move D, Nu Era, Gemini, Bjørn Torske, Glenn Underground or Matthew Herbert.

SSR Records was run by Crammed Discs chief Marc Hollander and Minimal Compact singer Samy Birnbach aka DJ Morpheus. SSR Records: In Retrospect comes with extended liner notes, exploring the pivotal milestones in the history of the adventurous label and zooming in on the origins of all records featured on the compilation.

All nine tracks on SSR Records: In Retrospect were selected by Hi Scores’s head honcho Kong DJ and have been remastered. Created between 1990 and 1996 and in the at the time pioneering spheres of house, breakbeat, electro and trance music, these treasures from the vast SSR catalog today stand as a stunning testimony to a truly remarkable and timeless musical legacy. Kong DJ: ‘While collaborating with Crammed Discs on the releases of Aksak Maboul in 2016 and Zazou / Bikaye in 2018 on Ensemble, I began to grasp the impressive catalog of the label and its sub labels, including SSR. Surprised by the tiny footprint SSR had left on the world wide web - often the case for labels ceased before the internet revolution - I wrote an article for British website The Vinyl Factory.

This would later prove to be the first step towards this compilation album, collecting favorites from the label as a kid in a giant candy store.’

Back in 2018, two mysterious twelve-inch singles appeared in underground record sthops. Credited to Blotter Trax, a previously unknown outfit who cherished “faceless” anonymity, the pleasingly twisted and mind-altering music on show was a mutant form of electronic psychedelia. The included tracks were variously informed by analogue techno, acid, electro and minimal, but inhabited their own clandestine sonic space. These tracks were, we later discovered, lightly edited “straight to tape” jams, crafted on the fly by their creators in one of Berlin’s most admired studios.

By the time Blotter Trax delivered their follow-up on Clone offshoot Frustrated Funk a year later, the secret was out: the project was in fact a collaboration between two storied artists, techno titan Magda – a DJ/producer who should need little introduction – and serial underground aggravator (and man of many aliases) Jay Ahern, sometime Hauntologists member and acid techno royalty thanks to years spent releasing similarly shadowy EPs as T.B Arthur.

In the years that followed, and before the COVID-19 pandemic grounded them in Berlin, the pair took their incendiary, modular-driven live show to esteemed clubland institutions (Fabric included), on an acclaimed tour of Japan, and onto the stages of festivals across Europe.

Four years on from that appearance on Frustrated Funk, Blotter Trax are back in updated and expanded form. Now a trio thanks to the addition of bassist Hannes Strobl, the band is set to release their far-sighted, funk-fuelled debut album, Super Conductor – a pulsating, thrill-in-minute ride includes contributions from a swathe of notable guests (Nina Hynes, Ilhem Khodja and David Moss provided vocals, Shigeru Tanabu played guitar, Matthew Styles mixed the set and old friend John Tejada mastered it).

While rooted in electro and acid, the album is impressively low-slung, stylish and funky, with nods towards Blotter Trax’s mutual love of Arthur Russell, early ‘80s NYC downtown disco, leftfield new-wave pop and flash-fried punk-funk. Released by JD Twitch’s Optimo Music imprint, it charts the ongoing dancefloor evolution of a band whose days of mystery and mischief are now a distant memory.

When I first heard Natalie Rose LeBrecht's time-suspending, air-ionizing music, more than twenty years ago, I thought "this kid is on to something." She's been proving that thought right ever since. Her recordings, from the teenage 4-track tapes she made as Greenpot Bluepot to the recent albums under her own name, have been fascinating dispatches from her progressively deeper dives into her gorgeous, weird, wildly idiomatic aesthetic. Holy Prana Open Game is a jewel of intensely personal cosmic music, created through a remarkable process of openness, craftiness, addition and subtraction. It belongs to a tradition of albums that document a rich, meditative sound as it rises up to join the world outside its creators' minds: Alice Coltrane's Universal Consciousness, Harmonia's Musik von Harmonia, Philip Glass's North Star, Talk Talk's Laughing Stock.

"Meditative" is specifically the idea here: Holy Prana Open Game had its origins in the fourteen days LeBrecht spent silently meditating in her home's small music room in the summer of 2019. "I came out of that bursting with the will to create new music," she says, and she created it sound-first. LeBrecht taught herself to program an analog synthesizer's timbres from scratch, and built a new set of glacial, heady compositions out of them, eventually singing to accompany the keyboard parts she was playing.

Then she closed her eyes at her computer, "let my mind be clear and open, imagined light pouring down through me, and began auto-writing to my memory of the music playing through my mind. Most of the lyrics emerged this way, and then I used my conscious mind to refine them a bit at the end." One other song came along with LeBrecht's new pieces, a cover that seems wildly unlikely from the outside and makes total sense in its context: it's a version of Atoms for Peace's "Amok" (which had been created by improvisation and editing, too), mutated into her own idiolect.

In early March of 2020, LeBrecht recorded Holy Prana Open Game's analog synth parts with Martin Bisi at his studio in Brooklyn--and then the world shut down. As you may have gathered, LeBrecht is very much a spiritual, head-in-the-stars type. She is also extremely hardcore, and if making the art she wants to make means doing things the hard way, she cracks her knuckles and gets down to it. Within weeks, she had taught herself how to record, mix and edit with a digital audio workstation. She recorded her vocal parts (sometimes multi-tracked into a radiant choir) at home, assembled a rough mix of the album, and sent it off to her collaborators.

LeBrecht spent some years studying with and assisting La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at their legendary sound-and-light installation, the Dream House. As with their work, her singular, precisely focused vision is shored up by its openness to artistic voices beyond her own. For Holy Prana Open Game, she worked with the Australian guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White (both of Dirty Three, the Tren Brothers and innumerable other projects), as well as woodwind player David Lackner, a longtime presence on her recordings.

Turner and White have been playing together in one context or another since 1985; in the summer of 2020, they were only blocks from each other in Melbourne, Australia, whose strict lockdown meant they couldn't meet up to record together. So both of them, as well as Lackner, recorded their improvisational additions to LeBrecht's rough mixes individually, often without hearing each other's contributions. "I had asked them to play as much as they could on each track," she says, "and told them that I would edit it all down in post, so I had a lot of source material of theirs to work with."

LeBrecht arranged and edited the recordings from all four of their homes to flow together like breath across the duration of her suite. Prana, one of the album's central conceits, is in fact the Sanskrit word for breath, with the connotation of the breath of life. Like LeBrecht's music, prana flows at its own pace, and demands stillness to take in fully--but it's also subtly playful and surprising, a force that can be as light as air or as immersive as the atmosphere itself.

Here we‘ve got two tunes that come with a fascinating story. Recorded in the late 70’s, but never released, this music was thought to be lost.But let’s go back to the beginning. Rose was originally a member of family affair called „The Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose“ heralding from Dania Beach, Florida. The group had early success with a recording contract with United Artists, which produced two albums in 1972 & 73 respectively, plus an extensive number of single release taken from these albums, which included the million seller ‘Too late to turn back now’.

But Rose’s story starts even further back, singing solo and as part of the Gospel Jazz Singers in the late 60’s, with even a solo appearance on The Ed Sullivan TV show. In 1970, at her mother’s request, she returned home to form the family group and to use her contacts in the music industry to move things forward. The group stayed together until 1976. Soon after Rose returned to a solo career, but few further releases appeared. During this time she recorded a number of tracks in Miami at The Music factory with producer Shirley Cowell, who later received a grammy nomination for her work with Lena Horne. Arrangement was done by gold-certified studio veteran Frank Owens. By this time the Disco sound had taken over much of the music industry and these tracks had a Hi-Energy feel that was much in favour at the time. This session produced the titles ‘Here’ and ‘I want you to stay with me’ but no release was forthcoming.

For many years they became almost forgotten, until the next chapter of the story.In 2018 DJ and record collector Dave Thorley saw an old & dusty acetate disc for sale online, credited to Rose Cornelius. When listening to it he realised that this was indeed Sister Rose of the aforementioned group and purchased it, initially with the intention of simply playing it in his DJ sets. Dave offered the disc to his friends of the Disco Bizarre crew from KitKatClub / Berlin for their record label. Rose, in turn, was contacted and she was kind enough to give permission for its release and additional contemporary remixes/ re-edits. Thus New York producer veteran DJ Duke and San Francisco Disco authority Jim Hopkins landed on the bill. You now have the results of this story on Disco Bizarre’s latest release - a story that has spanned fifty plus years. We at Disco Bizarre are excited about the final results and are happy we‘re able to share it with you.

In the digital age, words are no longer just symbols of communication, but a powerful tool that gives rise to meaningful interconnections between different universes.

Words have the power to transcend time and space, connecting two souls destined to meet.

Il Significato delle Parole (the meaning of words) is Adiel's new effort on her DanzaTribale, a crossover of two minds, generated together with musician Flavio Accorinti: techno sounds like the restless soul that pervades our days, deconstructed atmospheres like shattered generational dreams. The fusion of two cosmic currents, two ways of thinking and creating, characterized by an immanent power, pushing us to imagine new urban primitivism. Two creative processes, transcending individual boundaries to connect into a single overarching vision, to explore new forms of art and storytelling.

The EP, mixed by Donato Dozzy and mastered at Rome's Enisslab Studio by Giuseppe Tillieci, starts with Nulla Resta, a defragmented, dreamlike, ascending climax markedly cyberpunk: dense with references to 90s Progressive Dream, Nulla Resta, with its dulcet melodies, transports us to an artificial reality, a spiritual reality albeit dominated by technology. A reality suspended between fantasy and materialism.
Suspended, like the second track (Sospesa): dark trip-hop's echoes adorned by the voice of Jordie Devlin Mcmorrow. "Shadows on the walls orchestrate our downfall." Dystopian futures intertwine with mysteriously dreamy pasts in a fatal spiral of redemption.
But words remain the catalysing element of this EP.
Parole(words) represents a communicative rare faction that embraces tribes near and far. Black drums echo in the distance in an intimate ballad, in an epic ride, in an ethereal metaphysical journey to the dissolution of the boundary between time and space, between memory and perception.
Notturna, on the other hand, is the epilogue we all deserve; a solemn twilight, a lysergic, dragging escape from the objectivity of the real world.

The images of life do not simply exist in a vacuum. They are defined by the energy that surrounds them, and it is the explanation behind each of these words that we must find if weare to truly understand them. Thanks to the meaning of words, sooner or later, we will be all united again.

In the KID BE KID superhero universe, the fact that she is not only a singer but also a virtuoso pianist goes without saying. So much talent in one person would hardly be bearable if KID BE KID wasn't, above all, such a lovable funky freak!
"Naked Times! No More Lies! Here I am strippin' straight in front of your eyes," she chants in a futuristic dress with a gigantic shoulder width, and in the video clip she skillfully oscillates between the authenticity of her live performance and the complete unreality of the production.
Musically, it sounds like a finely curated neo-soul record collection pushed through a 2030s cyber-sound AI. Except that with KID BE KID, the beats don't come from the hard drive, but from her body: Human Beat Boxing. So hip-hop community members are welcome to nod their heads here.

In the 10 songs contained on "Truly A Live Goal But No Ice Cream" KID BE KID reflects on our existence between Internet publicity and Home Sweet Home, in which the mere start of the day can become a regular challenge! KID BE KID arms herself against the personified time and gives it an ultimatum: "Don't you dare not be better than last year!". As a result, everything in her life as well as musically finally takes a turn for the better...

KID BE KID has been touring Europe almost non-stop since last summer, has been recording vocals for Netflix ("Rumsspringa") and, in her remaining free time, has been hanging out in the young Berlin jazz and abstract beats scene.
All these influences can now be heard on her fantastic new album, where KID BE KID seems extremely determined to make the world a little bit better with her art:
"We are here for a reason, Move! Be the better Move!", she challenges herself and us in her song "Move" and of course: KID BE KID is a movement we are only too happy to join in 2023.

She has been a celebrated sensation for years for her live performances anyway, so it's no wonder that she is only too happy to make fun of all the boring online productions, including bloated self-marketing in her lyrics: "You'll have to post 5 times a week, at least 5 videos and one pic, if not your audience won't grow".
But since we have all become little self-marketing monsters with the desire for constant virtual pats on the back, KID BE KID directs this criticism primarily at herself: "Of course: For love everybody seeks, But it makes me sick, to do so, too" it also says in the song ("News Feed").

Well, when this album comes out in June, the ice cream parlors should finally be open again in real life. Walking there, with KID BE KID on the AirPods, we make a few jumps of joy! Because, honestly? This is really so incredibly good.

Long out of print (10 years!), this new edition of Soul Jazz Records' classic Delta Swamp Rock, features a killer all-star line-up of seminal artists who all first blended rock, soul and country together to create a stunning new sound of southern American music in the 1970s.

Featuring the Allman Brothers, Dan Penn, Leon Russell, Tony Joe White, Johnny Cash, Bobbie Gentry, Big Star, Link Wray, Area Code 615 and loads more!

This album comes as a superb limited-edition gold vinyl double vinyl release complete with extensive original sleevenotes, interviews and exclusive photography, all spread over a 12-page full-size magazine and two bespoke inner sleeves. The works!

Delta Swamp Rock is an interstate southern road-trip through the United States of America where country, rock and soul met at the crossroads - an exploration of the musical and cultural links between the cities of Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Nashville in the 1960s and 70s.

At the start of the 1970s, a new type of music emerged out of the southern states of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida. Southern rock, the creation of young blue-collar white Americans, blended rock, soul, country and blues music together to present a new vision of the south – a post-civil rights southern identity complete with a celebration of the regions natural landscape and its way of life.

The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd epitomised the definitive southern rock groups – a mixture of blues-rock and country with a southern rebelliousness and attitude. Unfortunately both The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were to be struck by tragedy, which would affect the movement’s rise and fall.

The backstory to southern rock is the fact that a number of the people involved in its creation had been central to the production of southern soul music in the 1960s mainly in Memphis, Tennessee, and the small town of Muscle Shoals (population around 10,000) deep within the bible-belt, liquor-free, deeply segregated state of Alabama, creating 100s of R&B hits on an almost daily basis.

Here in Muscle Shoals, with its proximity to Memphis and Nashville, an all-white group of in-house musicians, (famously referred to by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the song ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as the ‘Swampers’), created countless classic soul records for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Clarence Carter and more during the 1960s.

This album charts the rise and fall of southern rock from its funky swamp roots in southern soul to its phenomenal success in the first-half of the 1970s, including its influence on Nashville’s ‘outlaw’ country and tracing it right back to the arrival of rock and roll in the 1950s - the first meeting of black and white American music at the crossroads.

Factory Benelux presents a limited edition 180gm vinyl singles collection by Marcel King, best known for his sparkling 1984 dance single ‘Reach For Love’ on Factory Records, as well as the youthful vocalist on ‘SadSweet Dreamer’ by Sweet Sensation, a UK number one back in 1974 Limited to just 1000 copies, Reach For Love: Singles 1983-88 features both sides of the infectious electro single co-produced by Bernard Sumner (New Order) and Donald Johnson (A Certain Ratio) and released as Fac 92 in April 1984, as well as a previously unreleased demo for ‘Love To Shine’, the planned follow-up single on Factory produced by Tony Henry of 52nd Street. (NON-RETURNABLE).

The album also features ‘Hollywood Nights’, a later single cut by Marcel with Gee Bello of Light of the World, along with a rare US remix of ‘Reach For Love’ by noted New York DJ Mark Kamins, and extended dub and instrumental versions.

King was invited to record for Factory in 1983 by Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton, a devotee of soul and black music, and prime mover behind the famous Hacienda nightclub. ‘Rob was a massive fan of Marcel and thought he was as good a singer as Michael Jackson,’ explains Tony Henry. Not just a gifted and
plaintive soul singer, King also wrote both sides of his Factory single, ‘Reach For Love’ and ‘Keep On Dancin’, both paeans to perseverance and enduring Hacienda classics.
A classic video clip for the single, filmed at The Hacienda with local breakdancing crews, is available in.

Alas ‘Reach For Love’ was destined to remain an underground hit rather than a chart topper. Rob Gretton blamed Factory’s disdain for conventional promotion. ‘At Factory we still basically believe that you don’t have to hype a group in any way, and that a record should success on its own. But it’s getting increasingly difficult.
We put a record out by Marcel King and it’s hardly sold at all. The charts are wide open to hyping and marketing.’

Adds Bernard Sumner: ‘Marcel was an incredibly talented guy, but a tragic figure. He used to sleep in a car in Moss Side and was a bad heroin addict.’ A troubled but pioneering artist, Marcel sadly passed away in 1995 after suffering a brain haemorrhage.
1000 copies only of FBN 47 will be available on Record Store Day on 22 April 2023, pressed on 180gm black vinyl. The sleeve is based on original artwork for the Factory single and also includes a press interview with Marcel from 1984.

Factory Benelux presents the very first vinyl edition of the only soundtrack album recorded by The Durutti Column, the Factory Records ensemble fronted by lauded guitarist and composer Vini Reilly. A limited edition of 1000 copies on 180gm black vinyl have been pressed for Record Store Day 2023. (NonReturnable) Treatise on the Steppenwolf is a soundtrack to the performance piece of the same name by experimental theatre group 12 Stars, written and directed by Gerard McInulty (of fellow Factory band The Wake), first staged in Glasgow in May 2003. Freely adapted from the celebrated counter-culture novel by Hermann Hesse, the performance is a portrait a divided character in an ongoing state of conflict.

‘Steppenwolf was something I’d read recently and when we approached Durutti Column with the idea it turned out they were interested too,’ explained McInulty. ‘People have described their music as ambient, although that’s a description they don’t care much for. It’s certainly atmospheric and there’s something about their sunny-sounding guitar that seemed appropriate to a book that, although published in 1927, didn’t become popular in America until the 1960s.’

This expanded vinyl edition combines the studio recordings of the 12 pieces performed live by The Durutti Column during the Glasgow run, along with 3 long and previously unreleased tracks from the Human Avatars art installation at Manchester MOSI in 2005.

Newly mastered for vinyl by Peter Beckman at TechnologyWorks, this limited Record Store Day edition also features new gatefold artwork by Howard Wakefield.

This release will come in 10 alternative sleeves limited to 100 copies of each so the bedroom design of the front cover has been painstakingly adapted for devotee’s of; 1. Sex Pistols 2. The Clash 3. The Jam 4. Buzzcocks 5. The Damned 6. The Stranglers 7. Siouxsie & the Banshees 8. Generation X 9. Ramones and 10. Blondie… and that design comes with a signed and stamped print of that design inside…
Mal-One’s new five track 12’’ offering has broached the tender subject of the bedroom wall and what as a teenager we would cover it with, as we revelled in our teenage glory. During what we now fondly remember as the Punk Rock period, this would have been the promo posters, gig tickets, flyers, badges, t- shirts anything we could find to extend our allegiance to the Punk Rock cause. Track one of this extended play covers this dilemma in fine style:

Side One
1. Punk Rock Pictures on my Wall …from floor to ceiling and ten feet tall !!!
2. JJ’s Alright relates a true story of Mal-One’s run in with the Euroman Cometh himself and finding out first hand that
even if his band The Stranglers were to become Punk’s social outcasts that in fact JJ was Alright and so in fact was
Hugh….
Side Two
1. The Buzz-Cocks Are Coming tells the Buzzcocks connection to this movement and their entry point into the affray.
2. Damned Disciple tells what is required to become a Damned devotee. Which includes amongst other requirements
and as stated on one of their early badges ‘skipping off school to see them play’
3. The Satellite Kid tells the engaging story of Mr Paul Weller coming to London seeing the Sex Pistols for the first time
at the Lyceum Ballroom on The Strand. In doing so he found some likeminded souls and more importantly people the
same age that he could relate to and forge an identity with.
Hopefully to hang on your bedroom wall… it’s never too late Punk….

"The Fact of Being are happy to inform about the second step in a series of reissues of early works by Peter Davison. The long-awaited re-edition of a highly acclaimed and innovative album "Glide" 1981 to celebrate its 40th anniversary. "Glide" was the second artist's album. Released in 1981 on vinyl and urgently repressed in 1982 due to high demand it was sold-out fast again and has not been reissued since that. To date, this is one of the rarest and wanted ambient recordings that finally available again with original artwork and short liner notes from Peter Davison himself. A fascinating ambient album less new-age more minimal ambient. An absolute classic in the spirit of Iasos, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Michael Stearns... Peter Davison has composed music scores for Indie Features, the History Channel, A+E, Biography, PBS, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, Discovery, Gaiam (Yoga/Relaxation music), and others. Over 25 CDs of his music are available on EMI/Higher Octave, Gaiam, Davisounds, and TSR/Baja. His instrumental "Sip of Wine" (from his CD "Future, Present, Past") received the Best Song of the Year Award, Hollywood Music in Media Awards, (New Age/Ambient), 2010. Both "Fern Valley" and "Mount Tahquitz" from his CD "Forest Home" and "Possibility" (from his CD "Possibility") have also received nominations. Peter's score for the PBS Series "The Endless Voyage" was nominated for the "Best Score of the Year, TV Show." Peter Davison has composed the memorable music for over 45 of GAIAM's award-winning DVDs featuring master instructors yoga and meditations Rodney Yee, Patricia Walden, Suzanne Deason, David-Dorian Ross, and others."

Sergio Fazio has been the driving force behind a string of early 90s high octane releases sitting somewhere between breaky rave indulgences and early progressive trancey sounds.

Starting with “The Factory” project which we had the pleasure of releasing last year, we continue this relationship with an unreleased EP from the same time, finally allowing it to see the day of light 30 years after it was produced. To compliment the occasion we bring Berlin's specialist Trent to cook a new remixed version in his studio - Italy at it's best.

Heavy percussive elements flowing in and out of driving bass line patterns, hearing is believing, can't go wrong. Remastered and with full cover artwork.

* First album by new age and ambient music pioneer. * One of “The 20 best new age albums.“ by Facmag. * 40th anniversary reissue on limited CD and VINYL. * Taken from Original Tapes and mastered by Grammy-nominated Jessica Thompson. * Fans of Peter Klaus Wiese, Steve Roach, Erik Wøllo, Anugama, Al Gromer Khan, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Steven Halpern, Pauline Anna Strom, Steven Halpern, Laraaji, Inoyama Land, Michael. * Ultimate collector’s item for those who deeply in Ambient Music history. * Available on limited CD and VINYL with original artworks from 1975.

In 1978 Iasos has returned with a new album consist of 2 long peaceful compositions “The Angels of Comfort “ and “Angel Play”. These pieces are extremely soothing, heavenly, loving, and peaceful, and it captures the energies of love – on a galactic scale. It functions as a universal healing comforting presence. This genre of music could be termed “classical New Age music”. The philosopher Alan Watts has said, “Iasos is doing the classical music of the New Age.” This album is a “vibrational environment” of soothing loving angelic feelings – very nurturing and comforting. The music can be used for creating a sacred space, for meditating, body-work, visualization, hospice work, emotional healing, and for tuning into angels. It is well suited for relaxing the mind, body and spirit. When Iasos first released this album, it immediately became an underground classic, due to its universal appeal. It was the one of first albums that created a new music genre now known as “New Age” music. In addition, it still is one of the most cherished pieces of music worldwide. The Psychology Department at Plymouth State College had this music receive the highest rating, by quite a margin, for being “most like the heavenly music” heard by people who had had a near-death experience. “Angelic Music” was released on vinyl only once in 1989 on Brazilian label Estúdio Eldorado. This is a first LP reissue and additional CD reissue. Comes with original artwork – Painting “Star Dancer” by Gilbert Williams.

Manchester's Avant-Jazzy-Funk outfit Swamp Children were enviably eclectic and Taste What's Rhythm is their mini masterpiece. Flitting gracefully through a feast of genres with consummate ease, the band were almost indefinable and, accordingly, nigh-on impossible to market. So whilst this cult EP, originally out in 1982 on Factory Benelux, remains in demand for those in the know, it has also glided under the radar of many otherwise clued-up heads for over 40 years. If you don't know, get to know...

The Taste Whats Rhythm EP was originally released in 1982 on Factory Benelux (an informal partnership between the legendary Manchester-based Factory Records and Belgium-based Les Disques du Crépuscule). With it's kaleidoscopic brightness, silky panache and superb execution, it remains one of the most startling documents of a remarkable time and place.

The EP opens with the oh-so-Balearic title track. "Taste Whats Rhythm" gently unfolds with a Spanish guitar, hazy, drifting vocals and sun-bleached Latin percussion. After this most sumptuous of intros, the tempo is raised, the rhythms grow in complexity as horns jostle amidst the restrained chaos quite wonderfully. And then it winds down again. Proper fluctuating rhythms and tempos throughout. I guess that was the point - taste the variety!

“You’ve Got Me Beat” is a *perfect* piece of post-punk pop-jazz. A mysterious, after dark jazz-dancer, the aching vocals serve as a touching, tender resignation to love. A guitar hook which seems to elegantly reference The Blackbyrds' "Rock Creek Park" and a flowing pulse from New York's No Wave scene. It still sounds so fresh all the years later.

Closing out this most perfect of EPs, the twisted synths and nimble rhythms of bass-heavy roller "Softly Saying Goodbye" combine to create a super-slinky gem; Brit-Funk of the highest order.

Swamp Children formed in Manchester in 1980, around core members Ann Quigley (vocals), Tony Quigley (bass, metalaphone, percussion), John Kirkham (electric & acoustic guitars, metalaphone, percussion), Ceri Evans (keyboards, bass, percussion, background vocals), Cliff Saffer (saxaphone, clarine) and Martin Moscrop (drums, percussion, trumpet). They initially practised at a rehearsal space shared with fellow post-punk funkers A Certain Ratio and Joy Division/New Order. Young and relatively inexperienced upon getting together, the ages of Swamp Children's members ranged from just 16 to 19. Talk about the brilliance of youth.

From the outset, Swamp Children shared DNA with A Certain Ratio. Martin Moscrop was a founder member of Ratio, while Ann provided artwork for them. Although the close association with ACR led some to assume that Swamp Children were simply a splinter group, the new band pursued a more overt latin and jazz tinged direction, at the same time adopting a post-punk attitude towards making music, influenced by the records they were listening to at the time: Miles Davis, Brazilian jazz fusion and heavy funk dancefloor sides.

The band made their live debut at Manchester's infamous Beach Club in May 1980. Thanks to a double-booking blunder another support band turned up and were turned away, having travelled all the way from Dublin for a string of British dates. The name of the unlucky band was U2...

With arrangements that emphasised Tony Quigley’s darkly-coloured basslines (and Ann Quigley’s impressionistic vocals as another instrument in the mix) Swamp Children possessed an easygoing grace and a bubbling energy which indicated that the band's true strength was as an ensemble. The band’s musical sophistication (a fusion of funk, jazz, and bossa nova) would prove to be a strong influence on later UK acts like Sade. Indeed, Swamp Children themselves later mutated into the more known and acclaimed latin jazz outfit Kalima.

Working directly with James Nice, custodian of Factory Benelux, means that the audio for this re-issue of the classic EP comes from the original tapes. Cut at 45 RPM and released in the house Be With disco sleeve, we’ve made sure this record is well up to the job of having a permanent place in every DJ’s bag. As far as we’re concerned, this is essential stuff.

buen clima is the solo project of producer, composer and DJ Felipe Castro (Santiago, 1993). Under that alias, he makes a sometimes clean, sometimes dirty mix of techno, house and electro, among other styles, with a soft spot for high BPMs, big, glossy pad sounds and interlocking rhythms. With a background in classical music and free improvisation, his productions and live performances often bring into them unexpected moments of noise, unusual influences and, above all, humour.

« This EP is comprised of five tracks written between 2020 and 2022, and it's got quite a bit of contrast among them, as well as some common threads. Some are gritty and noisy, some are a bit more amiable. However, they all show signs of recurring obsessions with certain rhythms, certain synth sounds, and share a sense of fun and humour. Each is an exploration of different production and synthesis techniques.

Big Butibit Chess Master Pro v.3.5 is on the lighter side, with some big warm pads and jazzy drum sound. It's kind of a sunny ghettotech cut, if that makes any sense. The synth part has a spontaneous feel, it was recorded pretty much in one take.

>:) Is a heavier club track, made to go a little evil, a little mischievous. It's full of squelchy sounds and has a drum part that sounds like a never ending Street Fighter combo, or a bunch of beer bottles being opened one after the other.

Forma/Contenido is also on the darker side, with a droning, oppressive mass of sound that accumulates and evolves all throughout the track. It's very much inspired by the piece "I am sitting in a room" by Alvin Lucier, and is, in fact, a sort of live version of the same premise, a long feedback loop of the voice and the beat recorded and played in the studio.

Arturito is how we call R2D2 in Latin America (or at least in Chile), and it's also my father's name. We both love the original Star Wars and this is a little tribute to that. I had a lot of fun making this track, using only Ableton's Operator synth to make 90% of the sounds. It's a bouncy, evolving electro cut with a lot of quirky bleeps and bloops.

Pequeña midi is definitely the heart of the EP, a slower track made for my cat, who's sitting in my lap as I'm writing this. The rhythms and the sounds are a musical representation of how I imagine her life is like, and of her little games, running around the house. In terms of style I feel like this is what it would sound like if Yellow Magic Orchestra did a slowed down footwork track (play it at 160 BPM if you don't believe me!). »

After releasing their debut project “Voyage” in 2022, Tapioca, the Brussels-Kigali-based, Brazil-inspired duo return with LP “Samba em Kigali.” Building on their sound and influence, “Samba em Kigali” is a definitive step up and clear sonic growth for the twosome, whose debut, RA wrote, is "if Anderson Paak. & Marco Valle made a Brazilian pop-funk record.” Arriving via Berlin’s Jakarta Records May 19th.

Tapioca (32k Monthly Listeners on Spotify), the Belgian duo made of rapper / lyricist Alessandro “Le Tagarel” Vlerick and producer & composer Simon “SiKa” Carlier, tapped into a unique and infectious groove with their debut LP “Voyage,” released in 2022 via Jakarta Records’ “Dubplates” series. Positive reviews came flooding in, including coverage from, among others, BBC Radio 6, KCRW, Resident Advisor, JAZZIZ as well as performances and features on Worldwide FM and Bandcamp Daily. Their debut also landed on global editorial playlists such as Spotify’s “Global Groove,” (600k) “Tulum Vibes” (110k) and Deezer’s “Chilling Pool” (31k). “Voyage,” as the name indicates, was an ode to freedom, escape and the discovery of alternative cultural horizons that brought together various spoken-word testimonies from Portuguese friends around the world. Tapioca’s upcoming LP, “Samba em Kigali,” picks up the thread where “Voyage” left off, acting as an ode to traveling and, more broadly, of the inherent beauty of the African continent. Le Tagarel has worked as a teacher in Kigali, Ruanda, for the past years and his time there is reflected in the album’s buttery lyricism, putting forth the proposition that Africa and Brazil are in fact not so far apart - Africa is, and will always be, present in Brazilian culture. Featuring the Dillaesque sound infused with inspiration from rap, jazz, MPB and funk of the 70/80’s to the stunningly fleshed out lyricism - the LP sways like a ship on the smoothest of seas, a pure ray of aural sunshine to welcome the warm weather. Artwork was stunningly put together by Simone Cihlar (Anderson Paak. Tom Misch, Ivan Ave) and visualizers done by the stalwart crew at Die Ottos (Flofilz, K Le Maestro, Suff Daddy, S.Fidelity, Gianni Brezzo). Jakarta is ecstatic to share such a high-water mark of an album, out everywhere physically / digitally May 19th.

Kicking off “Samba em Kigali” is the impeccably smooth 1st single, “Lagoas de Ruanda” out March 22nd along with LP pre-order announcement. Instantly catchy, the crisp guitar, funky bass and buoyant underlying percussion are the perfect vitamin of joy that gives rise to Le Tagarel’s vocals. The track is a perfect sonic voyage that encapsulates the continued growth of Tapioca’s sound and gives a sonic peek into the LP. Infectious and groovy, the song skirts a line along samba, R&B and jazz with an almost hip-hop bounce.

2nd single, “Sabor Swahili,” out April 12th, is a nostalgic groovy splash that melds soft keys, bass and a percussive edge that slides you into an aural pocket. The song moves in a joyous melancholy that is almost impossible to move to, the under-water synth stabs keep your shoulders loose while the rhythm keeps you bouncing along. Even if you don’t know Portuguese, you’ll be singing along by the tracks end. The joyous 3rd single “Terra Preta” is out April 26th and will lift you up high to keep you in a serene mood anytime, anywhere. Focus track is the headnodding grooves of “Cara de Arabe.” Building from “Voyage,” Tapioca provides a fresh, rare vibe, adding a slight dose of disco to the R&B-driven progressions. “Samba em Kigali” is a unique album that is soaked and marinated in a sonic and visual aesthetic that brings with it feelings of joy, movement, and a global home, and sonic moods ranging from Bruno Berle and Marcos Valle inspired arrangements to bouncing progressions with a swingin’ percussive edge. Besides online promotion from the label and artist profiles, the album will further be promoted by external agencies within the US and UK.

One day, you wake up with a cloud in your head. You feel out of place and uninspired, and juggle so many worries the balance is skewed. That was Armin van Buuren three years ago. He put so much love and passion into his work and found it hard to cope with the fact that not everyone can be pleased. Something needed to change. So, he reformed his life routines, took up meditation to calm the storm and did everything he could to negate the numbness. And what he ended up with was a newfound love for music and an incredible three-part album: Feel Again.

From "No Fun" and "Computers Take Over The World" to "One More Time", "Come Around Again" and "Roll The Dice", the Feel Again album sonically represents the journey of an artist extraordinaire radically looking for harmony within himself. Its 34 tracks may be different in terms of sound, but together, they reflect an equilibrium that could only come from a man in balance.

From reconnecting to friends, family, and fans to finding inner peace, Feel Again means acknowledging harsh truths, finding out what really matters and letting that power a new step forward. Because in the evergreen words of Armin van Buuren himself, “we're still learning and will never stop learning till the day we die”.

Feel Again is available as a deluxe limited edition box set, including 3 LP's, which are housed in printed innersleeves. The set also includes 5 exclusive Armin van Buuren lithos. This deluxe boxset is limited to 3000 individually numbered copies on turquoise marbled (LP1), white marbled (LP2), and orange marbled (LP3) vinyl.

Murmer is the long-standing project for Estonian field recordist and composer Patrick McGinley, and in Tether, The Helen Scarsdale Agency welcomes Murmer back to our roster, over a decade since he graced us with his last production for the Agency. His field recordings often center upon the amplification and activation of resonance from a particular space, landscape, or object. Such sounds emerge from a condition as begin fleeting, inconsequential, or ephemeral and explode into that which alien, sublime, and profound. Here lies the tremendous prowess of the contact microphone, as wielded by an accomplished musician! The source material cited by McGinley includes cables, fences, wires, and vents.

There is a heft to many of these sounds as heard throughout all of "Taevast" with deep throbbing pulsations from arctic wind generating subharmonic patterns upon thick high-tension wires. Elsewhere the subtle dissonance from a rasping cooling fan blooms into a brooding ambience that is sublimely rich in its metallic timbres and complex reverberations. McGingley has long been an exemplary artist in the field of phonography even as he is less prolific than others. On Tether, he has produced a majestic if occasionally foreboding work on par with the mythic wire recordings of Alan Lamb, Jacob Kirkegaard's haunted resonance from Chernobyl, and much of the Touch catalogue for that matter!

Patrick McGingley on Tether:

In 2006, I made a collection of recordings at a mobile phone mast in Mooste, southeast Estonia. It is a guyed tower, 80 meters tall, affixed to 3 support points with heavy cables. I attached my self-made contact microphones to these cables with poster tack, and spent many hours over several weeks recording the various wind and weather variances (it was summer), and the birds that passed or settled on the tower or cables. This was one of my first visits to estonia, where i now live, and one of the things that marked me about that experience was the access: the tower had no fences or protections around it (I have not been back there recently to answer my own question of whether or not this is still the case); it stands in the middle of a field of tall grass along a dirt road in the countryside, just out of view of the few nearby houses, and during all the hours I spent there I was never disturbed or shooed away.

For more than 16 years, I have been thinking about this location and these recordings, and have made several attempts to work with them. I have used the sounds in installations a handful of times, and uploaded one short edit to the Aporee soundmaps, but have never managed to use them in any composed work. They always seemed too big for any structure I could provide them, whether I left them on their own, or partnered them with other sounds. Finally, in 2019, after putting them down and picking them up again repeatedly over so many years, they seemed to allow me in, although it took me another few years before they were happy with what I could offer. They stand now not quite alone - the majority of the layered sounds in the piece come from various edits of those cable recordings, but I added two other contrasting sounds, related to one another: one is snowflakes landing delicately on a plastic cakebox with microphones inside it, and the other is a frosted field of grass thawing on a lightly warming autumn morning (both these recordings can also be heard on their own on the Aporee maps).

Coming back to those cables brought to mind so many other wind-driven sounds that I had spent time with and recorded, but never returned to, that I began digging through my archives looking for them. I ended up with a pool of sounds from resonant wires, cables, fences, poles, fans, and vents, which became the basis for the 2nd work on this release. One of these sounds is among the first sounds I ever recorded, possibly within a month or so of buying my first microphone and minidisc recorder: the rhythmic fan of a beer cooler in a pub where I worked in North London in 1999. Other sounds in the piece include another phone tower, recorded on the northern coast of France in 2008, a telephone pole recorded in the Beaujolais region in 2010, the drone of ventilator fans at a factory in Tezno, Slovenia in 2012, an electric sheep fence in the Scottish borders in 2013, a hanging wire in a storage space in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2016, and, with no relation to cables or wind at all, calcium deposits being cleaned from the inside of an electric kettle here in Estonia in 2019.

I offer these two new pieces as my first solo publication since 2018, the first release on a physical medium since 2016. No one has ever accused me of working too fast, or being too prolific. I have a need, it seems, to leave a physical space of time around my work, before I can consider it 'finished'. Perhaps it is a simple need to forget how I did something, or that I did something; perhaps I have a need to be able to hear a work as a first-time listener would, before I can consider it ready for such an encounter. In some part of my mind I have to forget it before I can let it go. Well, I've just about forgotten that London beer cooler now, and that walk in the Beaujolais (with my father, who has since passed away), and that sheep fence next to our campsite in the borders, and that kettle that is now leaky. So I guess it's time.

"Morphing Chinese traditional music with bass, Chicago footwork and AI-manipulated birdsong. It's quite a feat to sound this ancient and futuristic simultaneously." The Guardian

"The album presents a world where flute and guanzi find common ground with choral vocals, ambient and AI- manipulated birdsongs." Vinyl Factory

"There has never been a record that sounds like this. And, very possibly, never will be again" Bandcamp

'At once fine-grained and expansive, Lee's work combines traditional Chinese music and historical references with wild electronic experimentation" Pitchfork, 7.6

'Island Birdy' samples Bollywood vocals, 'Foreign Flowers' has hints of warped drum & bass and 'Feather Signifier' is steeped in jazz fusion....Lee's most organic work has plenty of diverse influences" Resident Advisor, Album Of The Day

Swirling layers of OST-style sound design, dreamy choir vocals and traditional Chinese folk combine across eight dynamic and transportive tracks on Birdy Island, the latest album by Beijing-based producer/artist, Howie Lee.

On Birdy Island Lee's intricate brand of traditional pan-asian exploration meets experimental bass weight sound via stripped-back UK Grime sonics and ceremonial taoist music.

ULTRADISC ONE-STEP BOX SET OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S 1973 DEBUT PLAYS WITH AUDIOPHILE SOUND: LIMITED TO 7,500 NUMBERED COPIES.

1/4" / 15 IPS analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe

Teeming with identifiable characters, youthful romanticism, vivid narratives, and sophisticated arrangements, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. is a personal postcard from the heart, soul, and mind of a rock ’n’ roll lifer bent on discovering his world and what lays beyond it. The 1973 album establishes many of the signature themes and sounds Bruce Springsteen would embrace throughout his unparalleled career. No wonder a majority of the songs — “Blinded by the Light,” “Lost in the Flood,” “Spirit in the Night” included — remain staples of the New Jersey native’s fabled concerts.

Sourced from the original analog master tapes, pressed at RTI on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 7,500 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP set is the definitive-sounding version of Springsteen’s daring debut. Afforded the benefits of SuperVinyl’s nearly non-existent noise floor, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. plays with a clarity, directness, and emotionalism that practically whisks you into the New York office in which Springsteen — accompanied by then-manager Mike Appel — played a few originals for legendary Columbia Records executive John Hammond and earned a record deal.

That solo-centric aspect of Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. — credited only to Springsteen and featuring only a handful of accompanying musicians — helps make it unique in his catalogue. So do the acoustic-based frameworks, revealed on this pressing with newly exposed detail, nuance, and immediacy. The music emerges with an openness that gives flight to the Boss’ storytelling. His words flow with unbridled, stream-of-conscious pacing and vibrant imagery; they pay homage to and update a tradition established by Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Jack Kerouac. Equally important, Springsteen’s still-underrated vocal performances can now be appreciated in full-range fidelity. Earnest, transparent, and sincere, his singing comes across with an urgency that distinguishes him from the era’s singer-songwriter mold and a raw energy that underlines his unflinching belief in rock ’n’ roll.

Recorded in just three weeks, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. also stands out by way of its insightful artwork. Designed by Grammy winner John Berg, the inviting cover is appointed with images of the local landmarks, beachfronts, and geography that provide the backdrops for some of the songs. Those graphics are complemented by the beautiful packaging of Mobile Fidelity’s UD1S edition. Tucked in a sleek slipcase, the LP is housed in a special foil-stamped jacket with faithful-to-the-original graphics. In every way, this reissue is made for listeners who prize sound quality and who want to engage themselves in everything involved with this invigorating album.

An aspirational declaration by a then-23-year-old musician who was already a seasoned veteran of the Jersey Shore bar-band scene, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. can in many ways be seen as a semi-fictional autobiography released more than four decades before Springsteen penned his official tome. Elaborate, descriptive, and absorbing, Springsteen’s lyrics spark with the enthusiasm and exuberance of a wide-eyed adventurer ready for possibility, excitement, and fun — but who is also mindful of loss, pain, and disappointment. Words often tumble and collide like dice spilling from a jar; shaken and fully intact, they pour forth with purpose and without self-conscious concern.

One of two songs composed after label president Clive Davis cited the need for a radio-friendly single, the opening “Blinded by the Light” provides an unforgettable introduction. It flares with a blend of confidence, fun, and poetry that helps define Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Crackling with wiry guitars, funky chords, Clarence Clemons’ cool-toned saxophone, and action-packed lyrics, the shuffle simultaneously expands and contracts — and establishes Springsteen as a master of rhyme, alliteration, and breathless expression. The thread continues on “Growin’ Up.” Steered by ascending piano lines, soulful grooves, and frisky rhythms, the coming-of-age confessional is at once rebellious and controlled, fearless and vulnerable, honest and boastful. It is a tale to which multiple generations still relate.

Such universality has always been a Springsteen trademark. It surfaces throughout Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., as does another Boss hallmark: the importance of friendship and tight bonds. These concepts relate to the fact many of the songs — see the feverish “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?,” strutting “It’s So Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” and tender “For You,” the latter complete with brilliant Hammond organ shading — are directly tied to the friends, acquaintances, places, and happenings he knew. “Lost in the Flood,” whose cinematic drama and epic scope hint at the directions Springsteen would pursue on his next LP, extends that familiarity while addressing the kind of socially conscious issues with which he’s forever been associated.

Balancing the label’s vision of him as a folk-based singer-songwriter and his own desire to play rock ‘n’ roll with a full band, Springsteen never again made a record like Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. One of the most captivating debuts in history, it heralds the start of a legacy whose import Springsteen seemingly foretells on “Blinded by the Light”: “He’s gonna make it tonight.” And how.

11th album by the one-of-a-kind collective: psychedelia and free form jazz (not jazz) trigger a sophisticated excursion into weird textures with drastic turns. Dislocated dense music full of secret connections!

Kammerflimmer Kollektief – "Schemen"

Before reason prevails, invoked by those who want everything to remain as it is, Kammerflimmer Kollektief disrupts the established supply chains of sound. It seeks more interesting ways to assemble them. Trusting in this, because of the fact that every sound that still comes out of a guitar, a bass, a harmonium, drums and electronic devices has already been taken into the common mangle of meaning anyway. Enough of all that. Here, nothing is explained. Here we speak in schemes. Polished and jerky.

The images that Kammerflimmer Kollektief conjures up therefore happen not in the focus of consciousness, but rather in its outer realms. In those to which one does not give one's full attention at the moment, but which are nevertheless perceived. For example, when a leaf falls from the ground back up to the tree in the corner of your eye, and for an instant you think this is possible, before you realize it was a small bird flying into the tree; it is in just such irritating moments between perception and realization that the art of the Kollektief also unfolds. On "Schemen", familiar fragments float gently around their core – a Fender Rhodes tone, a bass figure, a guitar motif, a masterful drum shuffle, a moment of icy stasis borrowed from the harmonium playing of Christa 'Nico' Päffgen. Triggering brief associations, they slowly rush off in other directions through free jazz-informed editing work, whereupon such zones can also arise in which perception has a few tricks ready and earlier experience suddenly breaks into the now in a completely different way. Half suspected, half seen.

Half-music like Can from Cologne – also masters of improvised editing – sometimes produced a few decades ago in their in-between moments. The first minutes of "Future Days" for example, which fade in gently, sketch a barely graspable figure emerging from all directions of the room. Kammerflimmer Kollektief also engages in similarly open moments of development. Loosely, it eludes the first formative impressions, keeping itself ready for moments that do not follow any logic of appointment. This looseness in handling makes Kammerflimmer Kollektief so fluidly audible, even when dissonant peaks and free playing arise. What Karlheinz Stockhausen is to Can's understanding of composition, the recordings of The Cocoon are to Kammerflimmer Kollektief. The Cocoon, a meeting of garage psychedelics from the Hannover area with free jazzers from the Galaxie Dream Band, whose album "While The Recording Engineer Sleeps", recorded in 1985 in unguarded moments, operates in a very similar way with decentralized perceptual ambivalences and only appeared more or less secretly four years later on Wilhelm Reich Schallspeicher. Other traces of "Schemen" lead to the debut album of Quicksilver Messenger Service. The guitars of Gary Duncan and John Cipollina, which refer to themselves in an unforced manner, are instructions to let go. They don't want to be traced in every note as a solo, but they give their music a sense that the essential takes place off center, in the mutual and intuitive gift of loving attentions. Consciousness-free.

Loving turns like the little guitar phrase that, like a kind of leitmotif, is repeatedly ghosting more or less unchanged through all of the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums. A Coricidin induced, very catchy slide idea filtered out of ancient Æther, which – who knows – maybe even centuries ago found its way from somewhere to America – the old, the eerie – and from there wafted on through the ages to southern Germany, to a smoky studio in the Upper Rhine lowlands. A memory of which even the memory no longer knows what it once reminded. Unsaid, then forgotten.

In Kammerflimmer Kollektief you will also find a friend of slowly building, unhurried music, which probably would have been appreciated by the old Franz Mesmer, who 200 years ago, after tranquilizing treatments, sometimes used to play for his patients ambient melodies on the enormous glass harmonica. However, in order not to surrender completely to the flow of one's own life energy, as Mesmer had in mind with his therapies, Kammerflimmer Kollektief occasionally adds hectic tensions, gently embraced by the droning of a sine wave generator, as if a trance could briefly refesh. This old analog sine wave generator is new in the Kammerflimmer assortment of sounds. So, the art of the Kollektief likes to dock occasionally in modern times, yet with the past in mind. Mental states begin to flicker between imagination and certainty, between culture-bound art expression and coincidences: A cawing and scraping can always just be a cawing and scraping with Kammerflimmer Kollektief, the way Andy Warhol's mushroom eater just eats a mushroom.

Heike Aumüller's cover works, which illustrate all the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums, additionally act as amplifiers of unexplained refractions. Her style consists of eye-corner art that remains so, even when looked at directly. Her shots remain disquieting because they do not jolt themselves into a reassuring order, even in retrospect. Rather than evading the fear that arises when looking at them by trying to impose some irrational rhyme or reason, that fear must simply be endured. This strategy of endurance is equally applicable to the music. The trick is to let parts be parts without compulsively seeking delusional patterns that lull us into a false sense of security and in doing so, possibly delude ourselves. In this context, freedom means not having to anxiously attach a fantasized superior meaning to everything. "Schemen" has an conspiracy disintegrating effect.


b A2 Zweites Kapitel (ruckartig) [feat. Heike Aumüller]

Some gorgeous soulful boogie tracks right here!! The French Philippe Lecauchois, better known as "Phil Boogie Times" and Claudio Casalini, the factotum of the Italian label Best Record, teamed up with the intention of carrying on their identical passion, being devoted to Boogie, Funk, Soul and " Old School Disco". There couldn't have been a better choice to start this conjunction of passions and sharing of ideals: the first 12inch, produced by Darryl Payne in 1983, sees two precious gems such as "What's the Deal" b/w "Have You for My Love" by the charming ex Salsoul artist, Carol Williams (BTBS-12001). The other reissue of Phil and Claudio is 1984's "Come Back Lover" masterfully sung and arranged by Carl Smith (BTBS-12002). Listening to these splendid 40-year-old productions again will do good to the hearts of all the followers and fans of true soul music made in the USA. Coming on a limited vinyl edition!

Proper boogie action by Carl Smith! The French Philippe Lecauchois, better known as "Phil Boogie Times" and Claudio Casalini, the factotum of the Italian label Best Record, have teamed up with the intention of carrying on their identical passion, being devoted to Boogie, Funk, Soul, and " Old School Disco". There couldn't have been a better choice to start this conjunction of passions and sharing of ideals: the first 12iinch, produced by Darryl Payne in 1983, sees two precious gems such as "What's the Deal" b/w "Have You for My Love" by the charming ex Salsoul artist, Carol Williams (BTBS-12001). The other reissue of Phil and Claudio is 1984's "Come Back Lover" masterfully sung and arranged by Carl Smith (BTBS-12002). Listening to these splendid 40-year-old productions again will do good to the hearts of all the followers and fans of true soul music made in the USA. Must have vinyl edition of this gem!

French techno titan Madben unveils his much anticipated ‘Troisième Sens’ LP on Maceo Plex’s Ellum Audio.

Madben started absorbing the techno of Jeff Mills, Dave Clarke and Speedy J in the 90s, growing up in Lille in northern France. He retains a passion for DIY culture and warehouse parties thanks to youthful raving at Brussels' Fuse, Gent's Kozzmozz or in abandoned factories in Courtrai. All this has shone through in his music, including a debut album on Astropolis in 2018 that featured a collaboration with Laurent Garnier and a recent EP for Garnier and Scan X’s label.

Over the last decade, he has become a European club and festival favourite playing places like Berghain and Awakenings. His studio boasts a fine array of machines utilised to full effect on this latest opus. ‘Troisième Sens’ perfectly reflects what the artist has always loved, listened to and played, keeping one eye on the dance floor but never at the expense of musical narrative. It’s a genuinely progressive, multi-genre body of work that allows listeners to fully immerse themselves in the seemingly limitless depths of the Frenchman’s sonic capabilities.

He says, “Over the years, I learned to have more fun with the gear in my studio, and this has been the result. The album took three years to finish; I started in an underground basement studio in Paris before moving to Nantes. Therefore, it may surprise listeners with such a diverse selection of moods. It's dark in places but happy in others.”

'Departure' kicks off with uplifting synth work and broken techno beats that have a celebratory feel. 'Addicted' is a lithe cut with steamy vocals and a more fulsome combo of drums and bass, while 'Circuit Breaker' cuts loose in the cosmos. Acid wobbles, smeared synths and metallic percussion all make for a bouncy cut before 'Fade In Fade Out' continues the cosmic trip with vastly oversized synth patterns that will light up a dark space with overwhelming euphoria.

The brilliant 'It's 1 am In A Rave' is a dark, heads-down banger with 'Lost Memories' then layering up melancholic synths and Plastikman-style drum loops into something full of deep thought. There is no let up with the superb acid techno gymnastics of 'No fear', and 'The March' is a turbulent mix of sheet metal synths that whip about over steel-plated drums. 'You Dance Like A Robot' is end-of-the-world electro with a menacing robot vocal, and the electro tip continues with expert drum programming and menacing leads on 'Deep In The Jungle'. 'Meta' is a flailing rhythmic workout that sounds like the machines are in meltdown, and 'I Made A Dream During This Nightmare' is a serene techno soundscape for ruminating about the future of the human race.

Intelligent yet immediate, impactful but emotional, ‘Troisième Sens’ is another standout techno record from Madben.

Tape
"And we"re coming out of dreams / And we"re coming back to dreams" is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on YTILAER. Right out the gate, he"s standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs. "You do what you"ve got to do / To see the picture" Bill"s got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might - but you might not, too. In this company, Bill continues his journey, tunneling underneath the weathered exterior of what seems to be and into the more nuanced life everything takes on in the dark. With Bill"s voice making the extraordinary leaps and bounds that measure the lives of the songs, the band follow him through passages that seem to invent themselves; other times playing with deeply soulful grooves and/or desperate intensity, as these moments come and go. There"s nothing they can"t do. "I wrote this song in five and forever / I"m writing it right now" Bill sings on "Natural Information" - an admission of the everyday alchemy he"s forever trafficking in. Time passes, triangulating the encounters that went into any one record with two out of any three others, all of it made flesh, new constitution, in our stereo speakers. If every album is its own life, it stands to reason that they"re invariably passing in the night. Cascading images flowing from the stream of consciousness. Turning like pages from the journal, unspeakably personal, then suddenly become tall tales, like a book pulled off the shelf, completely unbound. Headlines flow through. Mirror images, mirthful ones. Bill"s lyrics strain at the lines on the page, not content to separate the printing of the fact from the myth or be confined to ink on paper. They want to fly free. And they do. "I realize now that dreams are real" On YTILAER"s inner sleeve, alongside his lyrics, Bill celebrates the "exhilaration and dread" of cover artist Paul Ryan"s paintings. Paul"s another one met up with again down the road, his indelible cover imagery on Apocalypse and Dream River now an axis of meaning in the Callahanian world - and in the bright colors found in these new images, a parallel to Bill"s recognitions here. "A breath of exquisite air as we come up from drowning", sounds like the desired hope for those hearing the songs of YTILAER.

When we established Balmat in 2021, neither of us could have imagined that within two years, we’d be putting out an album by one of our musical heroes: Mike Paradinas, aka µ-Ziq. The British producer has been an inspiration to label co-founders Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne since the 1990s. In fact, his album-length remix project The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq was one of the very first pieces of electronic music that Philip bought, way back in 1994. To have the opportunity to release his music now feels like a real full-circle moment.

Paradinas, of course, needs no introduction. Under a slew of aliases, chief among them µ-Ziq, the British artist revolutionized leftfield electronic music in the 1990s—coincidentally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Tango N’ Vectif, for his friend and sometime collaborator Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label—and his label Planet Mu has built up a formidable catalog of visionary, forwardlooking records, mapping virtually every corner of the electronic spectrum. With 1977, he turns the clock backward in a sense, and not just with the album’s title: Rooted in classic ambient and electronic sounds, these 15 tracks evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early ’90s, before the tools and tropes had calcified into cut-and-dried styles.

There’s no shortage of familiar sounds on 1977. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more selfaware. More than anything, 1977 sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.

Along the way Paradinas touches on dark-ambient drones (“Marmite”), horror-film themes (“Belt & Carpet”), jungle breaks (“Mesolithic Jungle”), and even house music (“Houzz 13”), which marks the first bona fide dance-floor moment on Balmat to date). Yet the album never—to our ears, anyway— feels expressly retro. Rather, Paradinas plucks timeless sounds out of the ether and gives them a gentle tap, spinning them into unexpected new orbits. At times, 1977 feels like an experience of extended déjà vu: When we first listened to it, we had the sense that we already knew this music. It was as though we had heard it years ago, perhaps on a battered cassette tape lent to us by a friend, and been searching for it ever since. We hope you feel the same.

Welcome to the "Consume Land Flea Market". This is the atmospheric setting and at the same time the luminous title of the debut album of young producer Noayama. "It centers on the contradiction between turbo-capitalist consumerism and the desire for vintage stuff in all kinds of shapes and colors to escape reality for a bit. I think it's quite a nice and suitable metaphor for the position my generation is in right now" says the 21-year-old producer, musician and interdisciplinary artist.

On about 40 minutes, Noah Berger, who grew up near Munich, spans a wide musical arc with his alter ego Noayama. He combines Hip Hop aesthetics with playful Electronica and acts skillfully in the interstices of Pop. Hints of 70s Funk hedonism, Old-School House vibes and modern J-pop sensibilities can also be found on "Consume Land Flea Market." The binding agent of the album is Noayama's "Punk Attitude" which comes through clearly on his tracks and beats and is an elementary part of his producer DNA. "I just like to drift, it's very central to the way I work" adds Noah.

Just as important for him are intergenerational collaborations, which adorn his debut work in numerous ways. An illustrious round of artists is therefore represented on CLFM. It starts with young female rap artist Maassai from the New York underground scene who can be heard on the pulsating opener "Get You Back". Also from N.Y.C is Hprizm, a member of the legendary avant-garde rap group Anti-Pop Consortium, who is featured on the dark and gritty "I Went Left" and the bouncer "War." Funkstörung is also involved here. Not too much of a coincidence as Noah has been encouraged since his teenage days by his father Michael Fakesch, one half of the Glitch-hop pioneers who became famous in the late 90s. With "The Legendary Godmother of Japanese Electronica" Coppe' on "Majesty" and the German singer-songwriter her tree on the song "Flâner", introverted pieces have also found their place on CLFM. In addition multilingual verses with Silo Inf3rnx from the townships in Gugulethu on "Ingozi" and on top "the homies from the neighborhood" Anothr and Taprikk Sweezee who give the album further facets through their contribution.

Noayama combines elements and working methods of the last five decades in a relaxed manner and bundles them into a genuine piece of work. Emblematic of this approach is the choice of features. So is the gear he uses. He incorporates old synths (Roland Jupiter 8, Nordlead) and drum machines (Roland 808, Roland 909) with playful ease with common software tools. It's also pretty convenient that he's currently studying Digital Arts at the Kunstuni Linz. In fact, his semester project is the visualization of his own album which means that every single track and every interlude gets its own video. Well, Noayama is just a gambler.

Chloé Robinson & DJ ADHD still aren’t short on fuel. In fact, they seem to only be boosted further by their own supply. With such a weighty momentum driving forward their newly established identities, only one big question sits adjacent in the saddle: what’s next? It seems that Chloé and Alex already have the answer for today’s daily summon, and for the next Pretty Weird release, it’s a 4-track techno record reiterating the trusted adage of less being more. With an emphasis on space and silence placed intuitively, the first single from the ‘Steamin’ EP finally gets its much anticipated drop - including a killer remix from close friend Four Tet stamped on in classic, inimitable style.

‘Steamin’ is all serrated kicks, 909 drums and tenacious vocals that yell without inhibition, invoking the looseness of a party spiralling unphased into its collective apex.. ‘Redbull’ scales up on the pyrotechnics and rowdy behaviour, taking the sensation of several shots of caffeine and packaging it into a mean, raucous pick-me-up.

For ‘Pax’, Chloé and Alex continue on the stripped back disorder with white-hot conviction through rhythm and textures that find their power through no-frills, unpretentious simplicity. Kieran Hebden steps up for the remix, nodding back in appreciation to the past through the nestling of a sharply redefined ‘Pulse X’ sample alongside his addictive, punchy production all too suited to those can’t-go-home-just-yet stints.

Early support from artists including Four Tet, Peggy Gou, Jamie XX, Floating Points, Ben UFO, Caribou, Skrillex, Mary Anne Hobbs, Bradley Zero, Bonobo, Saoirse, Zenker Brothers, TSHA, HAAi, I. Jordan, Logic1000 and Pearson Sound.

The duo of Charles McCloud and Roslyn Johnson made only two albums during their career…but those two albums (Everything Must Change and Spirit of the Living God) are among the most collectible records ever made in the gospel genre. In fact, they are so hard to find that we’re still searching for Spirit of the Living God to scan the artwork, but we managed to snag a copy of their 1981 debut Everything Must Change on the obscure Cheri label (though we may have to pass a collection plate to recoup the cost!).
It’ll just take the first track to show you why these records are in such demand; you have never heard such a soulful (check out those harmonies!), slow-burning rendition of that hoary chestnut “Amazing Grace” in your sanctified life! And with able production by keyboardist Julius Brockington, who played with Larry Young and headed up several outfits of his own, Everything Must Change is a crossover album in the best sense of the word, blending the spiritual fervor of gospel with the danceable grooves of soul and—dare we say it?—disco. Don’t miss the Donny Hathaway cover “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” too. Black vinyl release, first ever reissue in any format…limited to 1000 copies!

‘When There’s Love Around’ is GRAMMY Awardwinning artist Kiefer’s second album for Stones Throw.

For the first time, Kiefer is joined by a full band, including Sam Wilkes, Carlos Niño, DJ Harrison (Butcher Brown) and many more. Release to be supported with extensive global PR / radio campaigns and national and international touring.

For fans of Kamaal Williams, Kamasi Washington, Blue Lab Beats, Sam Wilkes, Moses Boyd, Yussef Dayes.
Kiefer is one of LA jazz’s most exciting new artists, with a broad international fanbase. Previous press and radio highlights include 6
Music, Radio 1 / 1Xtra, Radio 2, Pitchfork, Mojo, FACT, Mixmag, Drowned in Sound. Double vinyl cut at 45rpm for top audiophile
quality. Bonus track ‘thinking of you’ exclusive to vinyl release. (Not available on digital format.) Available to independent retailers on blue and yellow coloured vinyl. Headline European tour in February 2022.

UK Garage legends Groove Chronicles (Noodles & Dubchild) are back with the 'Soul 'N Mind' 12" featuring their highly sought after Brokenstep edits.
These have been on heavy rotation by the likes of Gilles Peterson, Charlie Dark, Bradley Zero, IG Culture and more. Limited hand-stamped and stickered copies, be quick!

Groove Chronicles have releases dating back to 1997 and are legendary in the world of UKG. Founded by Noodles, who is now working with longtime associate, Dubchild. Noodles has been working in the music game for three decades, from spinning at raves in Paris when he was 17, to serving it up behind the record shop counter, to running his own label, DPR. Responsible for bonafide classics like 'Stone Cold', 'Myron' & 'Poor Man's Break', his work serves as a blueprint for many sounds across the UK bass spectrum.

Leicester legend, Dubchild, stems from a musical background of reggae, hip hop, house, garage & jungle. He's released an array of dubstep & instrumental grime records through various labels since the early noughties, including Caspa's Storming Productions & Heavy Artillery, amongst others.

The duo also combine under the moniker Nu-Agenda with their own hybrid house style, and have had collective support over the years from stations such as 1Xtra, NTS, Kiss, Reprezent & Rinse, DJs such as Annie Mac, Zane Lowe, Mary Anne Hobbs & Ras Kwame, IG culture, Charlie Dark, Gilles Peterson, Bradley Zero, Marcia Carr, Afronaught and publications like iD, Fact, DJ Mag & Crack Magazine, to name a few.

Clear Vinyl

A blend of both deep and hard acid-oriented dancefloor bangers on this diverse four tracker produced Unknown Artists.

A must have for every self-respecting underground acid lover!

Als "Mr. Isaacs" 1977 erstmals als LP-Vinyl erschien, war der Grundstein für die internationale Karriere zum Superstar des Reggae gelegt. Unter der Federführung von Produzent Ossie Hibbert und seinen Musikerkollegen von den Revolutionaries wurde der Interpret Gregory Isaacs zum Markenzeichen im Albumformat! - Mit einigen seiner größten Songs wie "Set The Captives Free", "Slave Master" (im Kultfilm "Rockers" prominent vertreten), "Storm" (der Riddim kommt in über 75 Versionen zum Einsatz), "Smile", "Get Ready" (Reggae-Cover des Rare Earth Hits), kommt der Longplayer dieser Tage als Kevin Metcalfe Remaster als 9-Track Originalalbum in einer Fan-Edition mit Sleeve Notes und bedruckter Innenhülle inklusive großformatiger Fotos.

Among the most important full-length album works from one of reggae’s greatest singers, "Mr. Isaacs" shows the great Gregory Isaacs in the prime of his career in 1976/1977. Better known for his love songs, Isaacs was equally adept at cultural themes. The tracks "Set The Captives Free" and "Slave Master" are among the most popular in his catalogue, the latter immortalized on film in the movie 'Rockers'. The track "Storm" became an early favourite in the dancehall, its rhythm track (aka the Storm riddim) is re-imagined no fewer than 75 times over the last 40 years. Gregory Isaacs love of Rocksteady shines in his cover of the Silvertones’ "Smile", and his soulful side comes through on a cover of The Temptations’ "Get Ready". The breadth of material on "Mr. Isaacs" is the hallmark of a reggae classic!

Further facts and collector's info:
- The album was one of the first titles ever distributed by VP Records, "Mr. Isaacs" reissue coincides with the label’s 40th anniversary celebrations.
- This pressing features the earliest known cover art and producer Ossie Hibbert’s original Earthquake labels, as found on the pre-release edition.
- "Mr. Isaacs (Remastered)" comes with a printed inner sleeve featuring extended liner notes by Harry Hawke plus a great artist photo on the other side

Requiem for Jazz is a 12-movement suite composed and arranged by Angel Bat Dawid, inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film “The Cry of Jazz.”

The original form of the music was premiered at the 2019 edition of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago, where Angel conducted a multigenerational fifteen-piece instrumental ensemble (all Black musicians from Chicago’s creative music community) alongside a four- person choir (featuring singers from Black Monument Ensemble), dancers, and visual artists in performance.

Angel mixed and post-produced recordings from the performance – adding interludes, vocals and additional sounds, as well as transcribing a piece from “The Cry of Jazz” film. The final movement of Requiem for Jazz features Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Their contributions were recorded remotely at the historic Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra in Philadelphia in late 2020.

The final Requiem for Jazz work in album form is an immersive 24-track, double LP experience. The physical package is a deluxe, heavyweight gatefold jacket with liner notes by South African writer Nombuso Mathibela, artwork by Damon Locks, and a large fold out poster designed by Jeremiah Chiu, featuring poetry written by Angel Bat Dawid in dedication to all of her collaborators on the project. Additionally, there is a limited Thy Kingdom Come purple color vinyl edition of Requiem for Jazz available for the first pressing only.